The Nightmare Queen
by QAI521
Summary: Taylor Hebert died in the locker. But instead of staying dead she rose again, now armed with the power to crush the gangs and those that wronged her. Don't worry though, there's nothing left to fear but fear herself.
1. Foreboding 1-1

**Enjoy!**

Foreboding 1.1

Emma Barnes snuggled into her bed. The night air had a bit of a chill to it and the warmth from the freshly dried blanket felt nice.

She used to dread going to bed after the attack, the monsters would come after her in her sleep and threatened to finish what they had started. It was only after Sophia had helped her to start proving how strong she was that she was able to get a good night's sleep.

She had felt a little guilty for Taylor in the beginning and she had spent more than one night staring at the ceiling, remorse gnawing at her insides, but as time passed she didn't feel it as much. Sophia had assured her that was what it was supposed to feel like, that it was the last of the weakness burning out, that she was growing stronger.

The guilt stopped after that.

Though even after all that time she still had held out hope that Taylor could be strong like her, that she would be able to rejoin her friendship once she had proved her strength. Sophia had been skeptical, but Emma remained adamant that her friend could be strong. The locker was supposed to be the final test, the ultimate proof that Taylor Hebert could be strong.

It had broken Emma's heart when she failed. She could still remember her former friend being pushed into her garbage-filled locker, as she screamed and wailed for mercy. Still, even with Taylor's failure it still proved that she herself was strong, stronger than Taylor. Sophia had been proud of her then, patting her on the back and telling her how much of a predator she was.

Madison had looked a little sick, but she had never been strong, never been a believer in what they had been doing. Maybe she would be their next project since Taylor hadn't been seen or heard from since the locker. It would be nice to be friends with another predator besides Sophia.

Such thoughts clouded her mind as she drifted off into the sweet embrace of sleep, secure that she was safe, that she was strong.

Hours passed. The sun had long ago set over the horizon as the dark crept forward. Shadows clung to every surface, casting the redhead's room with the darkness of the moonless night.

A serene smile was etched onto Emma's face as she dreamed of being strong, of being a hero. Her in the heart of her house she was safe, here no monsters would get to her, here was where she was the strongest. A lie she had told so many times that she believed it herself.

The shadows coalesced around each other into a swirling ball of darkness. The room seemed to drop a few degrees in temperature as a shadowy figure emerged from the black pit that had formed in the darkest corner of the room.

She was tall and would have towered over the redhead had they been standing side by side. Her willowy frame was covered by a long coat of what appeared to be shadows. Her skin was a sickly grey that only served to highlight her off-putting yellow eyes and sharp teeth. Hair as dark as pitch flowed from her crown down her shoulders where it became near indistinguishable from her clothes.

She seemed to almost glide across the room, her footsteps utterly silent as she approached the sleeping teenager. She loomed over the bed frame and examined every inch of the redhead girl. A surge of anger and hate flowed through her at the sight of the pleasant smile on Emma's face. A dagger of shadow and sand formed in her hands. For the briefest of moments, she was tempted to rip Emma's throat out and be done with it but she restrained herself.

 _No. Not yet,_ she thought, dispersing the sand dagger with a wave. She wasn't here to kill Emma.

"You must think you're strong Emma," Taylor whispered. "That you proved your strength with the locker, that you escaped your nightmare." An unpleasant smirk crossed Taylor's face as she tapped Emma on the forehead.

"The truth? You never really left."

Dark sand seeped out from under Emma's eyelids and gathered in Taylor's palm. Emma's pleasant smile morphed into one of discomfort and fear. Taylor let out a breathy sigh at the fear the wafted off of her former friend's body. It was so tempting to stay and feed off of Emma's fears, to pull her insecurities out from the darkness and into the light, to tear her down brick by brick. To make her _suffer-_

 _No. Not yet,_ she repeated, the mantra burning into her mind. She couldn't let her desire for instant gratification ruin what she had planned for Emma.

The shadow dust from Emma's nightmare shifted, its formlessness taking on a shape. Taylor grinned as her Nightmare took form. It was small, barely bigger than a house cat, but it was a start. Glowing yellow eyes glared out at the world as its dark form galloped across the air as if it was solid ground.

"Well aren't you beautiful," Taylor murmured as she stroked the Nightmare's wispy mane. The twisted facsimile of a horse let out a quiet neigh. She could feel its hunger, its desire to spread fear and nightmares all along the sleeping city. It was almost adorable how it glared up at her, trying to fill her with terror. Taylor retaliated with an attack of her own, casting aside the Nightmare's meager mental defenses with a negligent push. The Nightmare fell back in fear and tried to escape from Taylor's grip, but it might as well have been trying to move a mountain for all the good it did.

"Shhhh, don't worry, you'll get to feed soon," Taylor said. The Nightmare calmed down at the mention of feeding. Satisfied that it wasn't going to try to attack her again or run away Taylor let the Nightmare go.

Taylor smirked as the Nightmare circled her cautiously, "You'll feed to your dark little heart's content, but you're going to have to be patient. Go to the others." She pushed the location of the warehouse that she was having the other Nightmares hide in for the time being. It was hardly an ideal place for a hideout, but it was out of the way and would be adequate for the time being.

The Nightmare neighed in agreement. It slipped under the window, temporary losing its form to become a wisp of dust and shadow. It reformed on the other side and galloped through the darkness of the city towards its destination.

Satisfied Taylor turned towards her former friend's dormant form. Instead of a peaceful slumber, she was now thrashing in her sleep punctuated by moans of discomfort. Taylor could feel the waves of fear roll off of her as images of red and green monsters filled her subconscious with fingers like knives and teeth like needles. It was the fear of a scared girl, a broken girl. The kind of fear that sent you blubbering into the corner to hide from the monsters.

It was delicious.

To Taylor, it was like a fine wine, something that had aged and grown with time into something sublime. A small part of her pointed out that she should probably be feeling guilty for doing this to her tormenter and ex-best friend, but she tended to ignore that voice most of the time.

"Part of me thinks that I should thank you," Taylor said as she gently brushed Emma's hair. Emma whimpered in response as her hair was cut away in her nightmare, knives snipping and tearing away as they held her down.

"Not for the powers, those were a nice bonus, but for the lesson," Taylor continued as she idly played with her shadow dust, letting it dance across her fingers like water. "You and Sophia showed me the real power of the world, it's not super powers, or ideals, or bureaucracy- its _fear._ Fear is what allowed you to run the school, fear is what allows gangs to run the city, fear is what allows parahumans to run the world, and fear…fear is what makes monsters out of us all."

Taylor glanced at the bedside clock. It was time to leave, she had dallied here long enough. She glided across the floor with an off-putting silence, coming to stop by the shadow that she had materialized by. She turned back to give Emma once last glance, a satisfied smile filled with too many teeth danced across her lips as the broken red head thrashed and twisted in bed as she tried to escape a nightmare of her own making.

"Goodbye Emma."

* * *

\- Shadow travel was a unique experience. It wasn't quite like teleporting, but at short ranges, it might have as well been. The inky blackness that surrounded her formlessness was darker than the deepest pit and colder than the Arctic sea. It was utterly inhospitable to any human life, but to her, it was like greeting an old friend.

Still, even to her, the shadow world was strange and somewhat frightening. It was a far cry from the near heart attack she had when she first entered the realm, but even after the past two weeks she still felt as if she was being watched, being judged. She would occasionally catch glimpses of yellow specks in the distance which only seemed to draw the darkness in even more rather than provide any illumination.

It was unnerving.

Still, even despite the off-putting feelings, it gave her she couldn't deny the huge advantage it gave her. The only limitations that it seemed to have was that there needed to be a shadow wherever she was going and that she had to have a general idea of where her target destination was. A little unease was a small price to pay for such a powerful Mover ability.

She rematerialized in the abandoned warehouse she was using as her temporary base of operations. It had been abandoned for years, ever since the creation of the Boat Graveyard, perhaps even before. Its walls were rotted and filled with mold, even to the gangs it was unusable, its structural instability made it far too dangerous for even the most drugged up Merchants to consider using. But to her and her Nightmares that was no issue, not when they could lose their form to slip through the tiniest cracks. Nobody would bother them here, here she could gather the strength she needed.

She stood on the scaffolding and gazed down at the floor to her minions, her Nightmares. Nightmares by the dozens roamed around the building, some smaller than a rat while others towered over her. Every one of their yellows eyes turned to her with an eager anticipation as their hunger gnawed at their every thought and action.

"Tomorrow," She said. Her voice was as quiet as a whisper but still could be heard clearly throughout the condemned building. The herd of Nightmares stood motionless and utterly silent as she spoke. "Tomorrow we begin. Tomorrow you will feed."

At the promise of feeding the Nightmares erupted into a frenzy, hoofs stamping on the floor and cracking concrete while their eerie and off-putting howls scared off more than one of the homeless in the surrounding area.

While it was exhilarating to see her Nightmares celebrate in such a fashion she sent out a mental attack that sent them all reeling. More than one staggered to their knees. When she was certain she had their complete and undivided attention she spoke once more. "You _will_ listen to my orders."

The threat was clear. She was strong, they were weak. They would obey her so long as she remained strong, but if given the chance they would turn on her like a pack of ravenous wolves.

Just like Emma had.

Taylor let out a guttural growl at the thought of the redhead before casting it aside. Emma and Sophia and all of them would suffer when the time came, but she couldn't allow such thoughts to cloud her judgment, now when she had so much work to do.

She could feel the first rays of the sun start to inch over the horizon in a futile effort to drive the shadows back. It promised of hope and rebirth to the dying city, a new day and a new start and…

…It was the biggest lie of all.

The city didn't need hope. What had hope ever done for them? When Lung rampaged across the city at his arrival they hoped for the Protectorate to defeat him. When Skidmark and his gang of degenerates choked the city with their filth they had hoped the Protectorate would break them. When Kaiser and his would-be empire crushed the minorities under their heels they had hoped the Protectorate would drive them out. And in the end what had all of this hope brought? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The city continued on as the gangs took more and more power for themselves, a cancer eating at the city.

The PRT was content to let the gangs roam free in the name of "stability" so long as they looked good while they did nothing, and when the gangs would start to act up they would hide in their fortresses safe and sound while the normal people suffered.

The fact that Sophia Hess was Shadow Stalker was only the icing on the cake.

She was done with putting her hope with the heroes. She was done with her dreams of being a hero. She was going to do with fear what none of that childish nonsense had ever done. If the city couldn't be saved with the light of the heroes, then it would be saved with the darkness of their nightmares.

If she couldn't be the city's hero, then she would be its boogeyman.

Taylor paused as she considered that word, boogeyman. It was somewhat childish, but there was something about it that just seemed right. Even if it wasn't a strictly terrifying name like Genoscythe the Eyeraper or Deathstalker the Deranged there was a subtle connotation that none of those names possessed, a history that existed for as long as humanity had nightmares of monsters.

After all, who wasn't afraid of a boogeyman?

"That's what I'll be," she said, more to herself than her Nightmares. A Cheshire grin crossed her face as the name rolled off her tongue.

"The Boogeyman of Brockton Bay."

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	2. Foreboding 1-a

**Enjoy!**

Foreboding 1.a

David Russo, or Mush as he preferred, wasn't having the greatest of weeks.

First, a delivery of drugs was canceled at the last minute which wouldn't have been that big of an issue if the police hadn't just raided one of their larger stash houses. As it was they were low on heroin and a few other assorted drugs.

Mush wouldn't have really cared so long as it didn't affect his cut but some of the normies had been getting a little rowdy while they waited for their next fix. When a few grumblings of mutiny started to work their way out of the woodwork Skidmark decided that Mush's time would be best spent going around to a few Merchant dens to remind the normies what would happen if they decided they didn't care for Skidmark's leadership.

Personally, Mush didn't see what was the issue with a few grumblings, but he supposed that was why Skidmark was the leader and he wasn't. Still, Mush was more than happy to take the extra cut that Skidmark was paying him for a job well done, but he did wish that he would have paid for dry cleaning too. Didn't he know how hard it had been to clean out the brain matter that had leaked through his trash shell?

Then to top off matters a few Merchants claimed that they were being attacked by some new cape. They didn't give any description, only that they started hearing voices of people that they knew. One of them claimed to have seen something in the shadows but none of the others supported his claim. So because Skidmark was a paranoid bastard Mush once again had to patrol the streets of Brockton Bay near where the supposed attacks had taken place.

In the middle of the night.

In winter.

Mush grumbled under his breath as he trudged his way down the barely lit street. The only warmth he got was from his rather ragged jacket and the cigarette pinched between his bent and broken teeth. He could be inside and toasty while getting off on his personal stash of amphetamines, but no, he had to be out here in the freezing cold all because a couple of idiots didn't realize they were hallucinating.

Mush cursed as he lost his footing on the icy sidewalk. Only throwing his hand out and grabbing a nearby light post to use as support prevented him from face-planting into cement. The cigarette he had been smoking slipped out of his mouth and fell onto the icy sidewalk, extinguishing its faint glow.

"Dammit," he muttered under his breath as he dug through his too big jacket for another cigarette. It took a bit of fishing through the junk that littered his pockets to find it and his lighter, but it was well worth it for the slight temperature increase around the open flame. Mush took in a deep breath and let out a large cloud of smoke.

Once he was done here he was going to ask Skidmark if he could beat those idiots into a fine pulp. Honestly, did they all think he had nothing better to do with his time? He looked to the side, there was a small alleyway he could stash himself in to have a quick fix. It wasn't ideal, but it would satisfy his craving and he wouldn't have Skidmark breathing down his back for "shirking his duties".

Mush glanced down the street at the sound of a streetlight blowing out. Sparks and shattered glass flew to the ground as the aging bulb finally gave out under the intense stress of the winter winds. It wasn't that surprising, this area of the city had been neglected for some time, it was actually more surprising that they had been working at all. What was surprising was when the next one blew out as well. Mush frowned as the third street light blew out to continue the chain of defective lights that inched closer and closer to his position.

Mush took a step back, only for the light behind him to shatter into a million pieces as well. He swallowed fearfully as the shadows seemed to become more oppressive, darker, thicker. Mush started to back up into the alleyway as the shadows crawled closer. A brief chill swept past him, crushing the faintly glowing embers of his cigarette under its frigid grip.

"Come out," Mush shouted towards the shadows. While Mush still wasn't entirely convinced about the existence of a new cape this certainly had all the hallmarks of a new parahuman's power. For a moment the only response was silence and the howling of the winter breeze until something emerged from the shadows in a slow, almost predatory manner. It looked like a horse straight out of someone's nightmares.

It was tall, at the very least it was a head taller than him. It almost appeared to be made of millions of tiny grains of black sand that glinted in the low light of the last functioning streetlight. Instead of a thick mane of fur black spikes erupted in a row down the creature's neck. The demonic creature bared teeth that would have looked more appropriate on a wolf than a horse at him.

Mush eyed the strange looking horse before him. He was pretty sure he wasn't hallucinating which probably meant that it was some sort of cape. He supposed he would owe those boys an apology after all. He was still going to beat their asses for making him slug it out in the streets if only to make himself feel better. Still, he better deal with this newbie now before he (or she he didn't really know or care either way) became too much of an annoyance.

The trash and loose debris that littered the alley started to shift and converge towards him as he pulled it in with his power. The trash underneath his feet fused to his shoes like a second skin and from there even more started to converge on him as his power expanded its effective range. It would take a few minutes for him to be covered completely, but it wasn't like that was much of an issue. There was only one and once he got going then…

Mush thoughts of crushing the horse's head under a dumpster fell short as two more strange shadow horses emerged from the darkness. Their baleful yellow eyes glared out at him as they growled in a surprising wolf-like manner. Even with his body halfway covered Mush still couldn't help but feel a twinge of fear at their unnatural presence. So as always, he fell back on the one thing he knew how to do when he was afraid, make threats.

"You wanna piece of me? I'll crush you," he growled, the words slurring somewhat through half rotted and broken teeth. He was hardly capable of the destructive prowess of the likes of Lung or Hookwolf, but he was more than capable of throwing down with the odd parahuman or two once he was sufficiently trashed out, though he preferred to deal with normies. Less of a risk of getting his head caved in.

If the horses were affected by his threats they didn't show any outward signs. Instead, they began to stalk forwards, their hooves clacking against the cracked pavement.

Mush grunted and pulled more and more trash onto himself. He had finally managed to cover himself completely in a relatively thin layer of garbage. He would have preferred to back off and gather up some more before he engaged, but with them blocking the alley's only entrance he had no choice but to stand and fight.

"Come on you little-AUUGGH," Mush's threat cut off as he started to scream.

His breath was gone; his spine was fire. He fell to the ground face first as a great weight pressed down on him. His garbage armor collapsed as he concentration lapsed, leaving the goblin-like man in a pile of discarded junk. Mush coughed out bits of broken teeth and blood as he tried to push against the weight, but whatever it was it was too heavy for him to move. He tried to adjust his positon to get some leverage but panic filled him once he realized that he couldn't move anything below his waist.

Mush desperately tried to get his legs to respond, kicking twisting, hell at this point he would have taken wiggling his toes, but nothing was responding. He tried to use his arms to pull himself forward, but he hissed in pain as he felt the weight press down on him even more in response. Realizing that desperately flailing wasn't going to help him escape anytime soon Mush allowed his body to go limp in order to avoid aggravating whatever injuries he had.

Mush heard rather than saw the horses approach him, their clicking hooves sending a chill up his spine. One of the horses stepped into his limited field of vision and lowered its head to eye level. Mush's breath caught in his throat at the sight of the far too sharp teeth that filled the creature's maw, its soulless yellow eyes glared at him with all the consideration one would give an insect.

Mush started to pull at the garbage surrounding him, if he could get enough then he might be able to drive them off, even with his apparent spinal injury. He started it slowly, allowing the trash and loose debris to fuse to his skin and clothing as quietly as he could, but as the trash that littered the alleyway was pulled over each other the horses took notice. The rustling of garbage as the loose pieces scrapped against one another was rewarded with a bite to the arm. Mush screamed as his flesh was torn and muscle shredded by the course but fine sand. He twisted and pulled his arm with all the strength he could muster in a blind panic to escape the pain, but all that resulted from that was the tightening of the horse's grip and for the briefest moments Mush was certain that he felt his bone start to shift from the pressure being exerted by the monster. Whimpering a bit Mush cut off his power and allowed the trash to settle back into its resting place.

Seemingly satisfied at his action the horse released the pressure against his arm but kept its jaws firmly clamped around it. Mush felt the weight of what he assumed was another one of the shadow horses leave his back and trot forward. Another set of jaws wrapped around his still free arm and pulled him up. He could see that his body was moving, but he still couldn't feel anything below his waist. They just seemed to hang there limply, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Panic started to settle in. Was this permanent? Was he going to be paralyzed for the rest of his life assuming that these monsters wouldn't kill him? Mush glanced at the monsters nervously, licking his cracked and bloodied lips as his mind started to come up with all the gruesome ways they would rip him apart.

"Oh, it's not them you should be worried about David," A voice called out from the darkness as smooth as silk and as chilling as liquid nitrogen. Mush flinched at the mention of his name. It wasn't that he had much of a secret identity, none of the Merchants really did, not when they spent most of their time out of costume hopped up on drugs, but his name reminded him of the times he would rather forget. A time before he had become the enforcer that he was now.

The horses guarding the entrance to the alleyway stepped aside to reveal the speaker in all of her horrible glory.

Mush wasn't sure if she was a case 53 or not if so she was one of the mildest ones he had ever seen unlike those freaks that hung out with Faultline, but there was something subtlety off about her in a way that didn't match with most case 53s. Her face was something straight out of a horror movie with paradoxically smoother yet sharper features that didn't look at all natural on a person. Her yellow eyes iris gleamed while her mouth was set with a mocking smirk revealing crooked teeth that were so sharp they might have bordered on fangs. Her hair appeared to be almost unnaturally stiff, instead of twisting in the freezing breeze they hung firmly down her shoulders. The dimly lit alley only served to highlight her inhuman features, casting them in dark shadows and pale yellow lighting.

"The one you need to worry about is me," she said as she approached him as her dark robes dragged themselves across the concrete and gave off the illusion that she was much larger than she really was. Despite the fact that she was wearing what looked like a very thin robe she didn't show any discomfort at the near freezing temperatures that were doubtless nipping at her exposed skin. The sickly yellow lighting from the streetlight darkened the whole alleyway by casting her tenebrous shadow across the enclosed space like a blanket of darkness.

Mush tried to lean back to escape, but his lack of functioning legs and the horses' grip on him prevented him from doing anything more than tilting his head back. Fear clogged his throat as the cape, because what else could she be, let out an amused laugh at his reaction. Even her laugh was subtly frightening, bordering somewhere between a chilling psychopath and demented monster.

"I apologize if my pets were a bit rough with you, but I needed to be sure that you wouldn't try anything," she said with an affable smile that revealed far too many teeth as if they were discussing ordering lunch together rather than threatening him.

Oh shit.

Mush had learned something over the years as a parahuman. If a cape was being polite to you while you were fighting or you were restrained by them that usually meant one of two things. One, they weren't all right in the head and probably batshit crazy. Or two, they were so ridiculously powerful that they didn't _need_ to be excessively cruel while they beat you to a bloody pulp.

Mush wasn't sure what this one would be, but he prayed to all the gods that he didn't believe in that it was the latter and not the former. On one hand it would probably mean that he wouldn't be able to beat her in a straight fight, but on the other hand, it would mean that she wouldn't place his head on a pike for not laughing at her jokes. Probably.

Hopefully.

Mush felt his greasy skin break out into a sweat. His eyes darted around the alleyway nervously, eyeing the horses that made up the capes' forces. Now while Mush knew that he wasn't the brightest bulb in the socket there was one thing that he knew very well and that was survival.

It was how he had lasted this long in Brockton Bay against the likes of Lung and the Empire. He knew when to cut his losses and flee or to jump a sinking ship. He had stayed with the Merchants for so long not out of loyalty, but because they were the safest gang for him to work for. He didn't need to answer to a rage dragon that could kill with as little effort as one would give a fly or a living blender that could just shred him to pieces. In the Merchants, he didn't need to worry about someone being stronger than him because he was the strongest.

He didn't sign up to be torn apart by a cape and her pet monsters.

"What do you want?" he grunted in a subdued tone. It was extremely humiliating to be captured like this, but at the very least he could use the excuse that he was ambushed and that she didn't beat him in a straight-up fight to save some face. Besides, being humiliated was a small price to pay for keeping his head attached to his shoulders.

"Oh, that's what I like about people like you David," she said with a shark-like smile that made his already sweaty skin break out in goosebumps. "You worthless cowards are all so easy to break."

"I ain't worthless!" Mush roared with all the ferocity he could muster, spittle flying into the capes' face. He would run from fights he couldn't win, but that wasn't him being a coward, that was him being smart. He couldn't be worthless, not when the Merchants depended on him for so much. She gave no reaction other than a quick glance to one of the horses restraining him. Mush screamed as the horse bit down and felt bone break and snap underneath torn muscles and bloodied skin.

"Of course you are and you know it," she said as Mush whimpered. There was no gloating at his sorry state or outrage at his disrespect, only a cold logic, and certainty that came with being absolutely sure of one's self. "You've always known it, that's why you hide behind a shell of trash because you don't want to have to face the pain, the knowledge that they've all been right about you. But deep down you do know that they were right, you're worthless, weak, useless."

The cape held her arms out wide as if to motion to the whole city and gave him an unsettling smile, "There's no point in hiding it any more David, everyone already knows how much of a weakling you are."

In the blink of an eye, she drew herself closer to the restrained Merchant and whispered into his ear. "You've always been the weak little boy who thought he could play with the big leagues, _David_." Mush might have taken note that he couldn't feel her breath as she whispered her toxic words into his ears, but his mind was focused on other things.

"You thought you could hide it from everyone couldn't you," the cape said in a deceptively conversational tone as she circled him. "The truth is that you couldn't hide it from anyone," she said as she turned to face him. Her pupils seemed to stare into his very soul, past all the layers that he had used to hide the truth from everyone, even himself over the years.

She smirked, a cruel and mocking thing, "I might laugh if it wasn't so sad."

"I mean did you really think you were fooling the Merchants?" she asked as if she was honestly curious about his answer. "They've probably been laughing behind your back since day one."

"You don't know anything about me," Mush said as he tried to avoid her soul-searing gaze. "I'm ain't some weak shit to them, I'm their muscle- I'm the reason the Merchants lasted this long."

That part Mush knew was a fact. Before he had joined the Merchants they usually had been forced to flee at the first sign of conflict. Even with Squealer's vehicles supporting them they weren't able to keep up with the firepower that the other gangs and the Protectorate could dish out.

Even with him they still couldn't, but with his power, they were able to close the gap to something more manageable and less one sided. He was important to the Merchants; he wasn't one of the wasted homeless that Skidmark used as cannon fodder.

Still, even with this self-assurance of his own self-worth Mush couldn't help but feel a niggling doubt in the back of his mind. If he was that important to Skidmark, and he was, why was he…

"Being used as bait," the cape asked. Mush looked up to the cape, whose pitch-black pupils stared down at him with something he couldn't quite identify. Pity? Contempt?

"The fact that Skidmark sent you out here by yourself to confront what could very well be a new cape only goes to show how much you're actually worth to him," the cape explained in a very calm and collected manner, as if she was reciting the local weather station rather than tearing apart his life.

"You're expendable David."

Mush wanted to rage, to scream at her until his voice gave out, he wanted to crush her skull with his bare hands to prove her wrong, to make her eat her own words, but he didn't- he _couldn't._

How many times had Skidmark sent him on a menial but potentially life-threatening job that could have easily been accomplished by one of the dozens of mooks that followed him like a group of lemmings?

Far too many times.

How many times had his concerns been overruled as he was sent to fight someone of almost overwhelming power in order to give the others time to escape?

Too many.

In the end, he didn't try to refute what she was saying because he didn't think he could.

Her words cut deeper than anything her pets had done so far, and in that moment he wasn't Mush, the premier parahuman enforcer of the Merchants, he was David, the weakling who was beaten virtually every day of his life. The waste of space that had never amounted to anything. A boy that had nearly been beaten to death in a pile of filth.

He had triggered that day, begging for mercy as a couple of his fellow gangbangers beat him half to death with their bare fists, laughing all the while. After he had triggered he had returned the favor and left their broken bodies for the police to find later. It had been a statement, an acknowledgment of his newfound power. That had been the final nail in the coffin for his entrance into the criminal underworld. What with his already long rap sheet for someone of his young age he would have been sent to prison so instead of trying to live like a normal teenager he committed himself to being a full-time criminal. It had been one of the most defining moments of his life.

And the one he hid the most.

All his life David had been told he was worthless, useless, less than nothing. He had never fit in, not in school where the jocks beat him, the girls laughed at his disgusting features, even the nerds and geeks didn't like him because he was, as they put it, "terminally stupid". He hadn't even fit in with his family, hell his mom had outright hated him and he didn't even know who his father was.

So when he had joined the Merchants years later he had been elated. He wouldn't have to compete with any brutes within the group or breakers that could no sell his power. He would be the muscle of the group; he would be _important_.

He tried to say something but nothing came out but a small squeak. David swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down his throat as he considered her words. There was no uncertainty or hesitation in her eyes or actions. Tendrils of fear clawed at his insides as he considered the impossible. What if she was right? Did people know how he had broken after almost being killed? Did they know that he had once been weak, worthless?

The Merchants needed him, that was a fact. He knew that without his power they wouldn't have been able to hold the territory they did.

But it had never been about territory for Skidmark had it? He wasn't like Kaiser or Lung who tried to carve out their own respective little empires, all Skids cared about was making money and getting high. What did he care if they lost a street or two when they could easily move into the next one? So in the end what did they need him for exactly? Was he just a tool to throw at the hounds nipping at their heels when the time called for it?

"Of course that's what you are to them David, a tool, a worthless and entirely replaceable tool," the cape said with a smile. "That's all you've ever been, so why did you think the Merchants would be any different?"

"…What do you want?" David asked, his voice cracking somewhat. He couldn't think about this right now. He needed to focus on something else, anything else.

"Hmm," the cape hummed as if she was lost in her thoughts, "Oh right, I suppose I got a bit sidetracked there. You see David, I need you to deliver a message to Skidmark. I need you to tell him that he and his little gang are no longer welcome in this city and that if he doesn't leave there will be...consequences."

David snarled as his fear twisted into anger at the knowledge that Skidmark may have been screwing with him this entire time, "Why don't you deliver it yourself bitch?"

The parahuman's eyes flash dangerously and for a moment David feared that she might have her pets rip him apart. Instead, she gave him an obviously fake smile, "You misunderstand David, I'm not giving you the message- you _are_ the message."

It only took David a second to realize the meaning behind the cape's words. When he did his skin turned white as a sheet and his blood went cold _._ "No," David begged as the horses started to drag him deeper into the alleyway where nobody would investigate.

"Please no!" His cried were ignored as more horses stalked down the alley, their yellow eyes glinting in the alley's pale light.

David Russo struggled against his captors, but he might as well have been trying to break a wall with his bare hands. The horses were just too strong. He desperately tried to gather the trash that he was being dragged through in a last ditch effort to make himself a suit of armor, but all he was rewarded with was another chunk of his flesh being torn off.

The cape just watched with a cool detachment as more of her minions moved toward the begging Merchant. David's pleads for mercy turned into shrill screaming as more of the horses descended upon him. The last thing that the Merchant could see before his vision was completely consumed by black sand was the cape's lips twitching up into a smirk.

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	3. Foreboding 1-2

**Enjoy!**

Foreboding 1.2

Taylor- no Boogeyman, that's who she was right now, watched with a detached interest as her Nightmares placed Mush's broken body at the foot of the hospital. As she watched the terror filled Mush involuntary twitch in agony and fear, she couldn't help but feel a stab of pity for the drug addicted parahuman.

Like her he had spent much of his life being an outcast, being bullied for being different until he finally broke. The pity she felt for him, however, was largely overshadowed by the contempt for his practices. Derrell had been a criminal long before he became Mush. The fact that he gave into his vices even more after he gained his powers only served to highlight the disappointment she felt for such a waste of potential.

Boogeyman watched as nurses rushed out of the hospital's glass doors, gurney in tow as the first one to reach him placed his hand on the Merchant's slightly mangled neck, no doubt checking for a pulse. The shouting became more urgent and directed as the nurse waved his compatriots to get the Merchant inside.

It had been more than a little tempting to let Mush die from his wounds, to allow his life to ebb away as the exposure from the frigid winter night whittled away what little strength he had. How easy it would have been to permanently remove his stain from the face of Brockton Bay, but right now he was more useful to her alive than dead in a ditch.

He would live to tell stories about her, passing on what would happen to criminals that strayed into Brocton Bay and the consequences of their actions. Besides, death might have been too much of a mercy for someone like Mush who regularly worked with those who forcibly addicted children to drugs in order to extort them for money. Even if he never held the needle personally their blood was on his hands.

No, he would live, but it wouldn't be pleasant. Her Nightmares had broken most of the bones in his body and had taken more than a few chunks of flesh out. Unless the hospital called for Panacea Mush wasn't going to be walking anytime soon and even if he was healed by the New Wave striker it would be unlikely that he would rejoin the Merchants. She had planted the seeds of doubt in his head about Skidmark and in time they would grow until his suspicion consumed him. He would never trust anyone ever again, not after a perceived betrayal from someone he had worked with for years.

In any case, Mush wasn't going to be a threat for quite some time and was no longer a primary concern of hers. In one fell swoop, she removed one of the two Merchant parahumans that might have given her pause.

"Let's go," she said, the PRT would probably be here soon to take a statement and figure out what exactly was going on and she didn't want to risk being spotted in case they brought a cape with them.

The Nightmare neighed in disappointment. Boogeyman knew that it could feel the fear the wafted off the hospital from all of those fighting for their lives and how tempting it would be to just stop and feas-

"Let's go," she repeated, this time harsher and more commanding. The Nightmare neighed in disappointment again but complied this time, trotting off across the rooftops in the opposite direction. Giving into her hunger pangs so quickly would set a bad precedent.

When she had first received her powers the knowledge that she would have to feed off of people's fears haunted her. How could she live with herself if she was forced to constantly keep people in a state of fear of her for own survival? She had been more than half tempted to starve herself and fade from existence entirely, erasing the stain on the Earth that was Taylor Hebert.

But then, with that happened with her dad…

The mere thought that the trio's machinations had led to her father's fate however indirectly stoked her with a burning hatred for her three tormentors more than she had ever thought possible. She had been prepared to send all three of them into eternal nightmares for what they did and she would have done it without hesitation.

But then she discovered that Sophia was Shadow Stalker and everything changed.

Oh, she still hated the trio, Emma, and Sophia in particular, but her new found knowledge brought with it a realization. The trio, they were just a symptom of the problem, an issue that had been devouring the city from the inside ever since the reveal of Scion during the eighties, maybe even further back than that.

The police, the mayor, the PRT and Protectorate, they didn't own this city, the gangs did, criminals, murderers, rapists and the like. They walked down the streets in broad daylight without a care in the world because they knew that they wouldn't be taken down. They were free to commit their depraved and cruel acts as long as they wanted to because they had power. It wasn't like the Protectorate or PRT would take down the parahumans that protected them, their containment might as well have a revolving door and the police had all but ceded control to the gangs and PRT.

It was the same issue with the trio, just on a smaller scale. They had power over Taylor and the school in the form of Sophia's ward status and the funding that was likely to come with it and they could get away with anything up to and including murder because the school was afraid of losing their funding.

It had taken quite a few internet searches and library books to find out what had changed since the reveal of parahumans, and having an aging librarian have a near heart attack for seeing a book float on its own, but she finally found the answer to the question that had clawed in forefront of her mind for weeks.

Fear.

Or rather a lack of fear to be precise. Before the advent of heroes and villains, the United States government had a monopoly on power. Criminals and people feared what would happen if the broke the law because they knew that they wouldn't be able to compete with the power of the police and other law enforcement agencies. Countless hours of research showed that the rise of parahumans ended the government's monopoly on power. What use were a pistol and handcuffs when a person could fly and break steel with their bare hands?

Throughout all of this what Boogeyman had found the most baffling was that nobody really liked to acknowledge this. Oh sure the civilians would comment on how the PRT and Protectorate weren't actually doing anything productive in the long term, but nobody in actual positions of authority and power seemed to want to acknowledge that they were no longer in control. Instead, they tried to pretty everything up and bury their heads in the sand to any evidence they weren't in control anymore while criminals ran whole parts of cities with impunity and monsters like Endbringers and the Slaughterhouse devastated entire population centers without pause.

 _Ineffectual fools,_ Boogeyman thought with a growl as her Nightmare shifted underneath her, responding to her emotional state. The heroes were willing to sacrifice civilians to the fires of anarchy and allow psychopaths like Sophia to roam the street in order to maintain an illusion of authority. While they got to hide in their little fortress on the bay and ride out the rot that consumed the city, all of the civilians suffered.

She was done suffering for their sakes.

People on forums said it would be impossible for anyone to bring the city to heel. Most had grown up in what was a dying city and had known nothing else. Others simply didn't think that it was possible for any real change to happen, that the gangs had simply been in charge for too long for anyone to make any real headway.

She would show them the error of their ways.

If the gangs wouldn't fear the heroes, then they would fear _her._ She was going to have to be more than just another parahuman vigilante, she had to make herself a myth, a legend. She would become something that would be so feared by the criminals that infested this city like rats that none of the would dare commit any crimes.

She would flood the city in darkness and nightmares just like _he had to countless worlds at the end of the Golden Age. He would_ …

Boogeyman hissed, bringing her hand up to her forehead as it throbbed in pain. What…what had she been thinking about?

The Nightmare beneath her neighed in response to its master's sudden shift in mood.

"I'm fine," Boogeyman hissed as her eyes scrunched up in discomfort, "Keep going."

The Nightmare snorted as if it disagreed with her assessment of her well-being but complied and continued its path towards the more gang-infested part of town. Satisfied that her mount was listening Boogeyman took a breath to relieve her tension as her headache faded away. She had been getting them since she got her powers and she still had no idea what they were. Images ghosted through her mind so fast and fleeting that she couldn't make out what they were, like trying to catch water with her bare hands no matter how hard she tried she couldn't bring them to the forefront of her mind.

 _They're not important._

"I guess they're not," Boogeyman muttered to herself as she mused on her power's peculiarities. She supposed that so long as she had powers that made a difference it didn't really matter if she had to endure a little discomfort. It wasn't like it was anything worse than what the trio did to her.

Whether it was important or not she was going to have to put it on the backburner for the time being while she worked on the next phase of her plan.

"Stop," Boogeyman commanded with a tug on the reigns. The Nightmare responded immediately, coming to a dead stop. It pawed the rooftop with nervous anticipation while Boogeyman dismounted. "Wait here."

Her form became nothing more than a shadow as she slipped through the cracks in the roof, weaving her way through insulation until she reached her destination. She allowed herself to become tangible again as she examined the child's room she had invaded.

It was rather nondescript; the walls were almost bare of anything resembling personal property. A single half broken drawer with peeling white paint was really the only thing that stood out in the bare room. A child who couldn't have been older than nine was snoozing on a rickety old bed that looked like it was being held together by duct tape. Her dark skin stood out against the permanently stained grey bed sheet that only managed to cover about two-thirds of her body, with only her ripped pajamas to protect her from the cold winter air that seeped through the cracked walls of her house.

Despite the seemingly destitute nature of the child, her dreams were strong, like a lighthouse in the middle of a stormy night they shone past the dark that crept at the edges of her subconscious, fighting back against a level of cynicism that was surprising for someone of her age.

It had been… difficult at first, to do this to children. It was one thing to give her tormentors and gang members their karmic justice, but to subject innocent children to their nightmares was something different.

Still, it was something that had to be done, she needed power and children's nightmares gave her a far greater boost than most adults. She wasn't sure why exactly, but it wasn't something she could change. She could only try and minimize how many children she visited each night otherwise she would never be able to grow stronger. She would have preferred to feed off the better to do children, the ones who didn't live in poverty fearing every day for their lives and the lives of their families. But that would mean more travel time between her feeding grounds the Merchant's territory and it would undoubtedly bring more scrutiny upon her activities from the PRT and Protectorate than she wanted right now.

Besides, wouldn't the security of their safety and future be well worth a few nightmares?

She tapped the sleeping girl's forehead and frowned as her dreams of picnics and wildflowers became fire and ash. Her small smile changed into a fearful frown as she drew herself closer together as if she could protect herself by shielding herself from the nightmare. While Boogeyman didn't feel nearly the same amount of satisfaction she had felt witnessing Emma's suffering as black sand poured out from under her eyelids and formed a small Nightmare, she couldn't deny that feeding off of fears felt good.

Each nightmare was a small spurt of power, tiny and almost insignificant on its own, but when combined with the nightmares of others the change became obvious. She had never felt this alive before she had gotten her powers.

It was exhilarating.

It was also terrifying. If she didn't restrain herself from feeding indiscriminately what would she become? She could imagine it now, Nightmares flooding the streets and tearing through buildings to get a quick meal while she stood on high and watched. It wouldn't be that hard, as far as she could tell she didn't seem to have any hard limit to how many Nightmares she could make or how strong she could get other than the amount and intensity of the fear that she and her minions fed off of.

Still, she couldn't allow her life to be consumed by what-ifs, not when she had the power to make some real change to the city.

"Go," she said as she gave a minor mental nudge to the newborn Nightmare to go join its brethren in feeding. As the Nightmare slipped into the freezing night Boogeyman considered how her actions would be viewed here.

She had no doubt that the PRT would label her as a villain no matter how much good she did. The mere fact that she would be doing good would no doubt play a part in her classification as a villain after all PR was their lifeblood. If someone else came in and started doing their job for them they would have to do everything in their power in order to avoid being seen as incompetent. They might even try to press-gang her like they did to Sophia, but Boogeyman wasn't going to let that happen, not now and not ever.

She wasn't going to become a stooge for the very same organization that had allowed her city to continue its downward spiral. She wasn't going to trade off effectiveness for appearance.

 _Easier said than done,_ Boogeyman thought with a grumble as she slipped back into her shadow form and rejoined her steed on the roof. While the lack of meaningful effort from the PRT had certainly assisted the gangs in their hostile takeover of the city they didn't get this far by being as incompetent as their counterparts. They had years to dig in and fortify their positions. The Empire alone probably had a close to five hundred members, not even including over fifteen parahumans with a few more that rotated in and out from around the country.

Their primary competitors, the ABB, didn't nearly have as many men or parahumans to hold their territory but they did have Lung, the man who drove off Leviathan. What the ABB lacked for in numbers and equipment they more than made up for it with the sheer strength of their boss.

She had been more than a little tempted to take the fight directly to them and drive out the two biggest gangs in the city but then her survival instinct that she had relied on for the last two years of Winslow managed to get past the haze of her power trip and remind her of the reality of her situation.

Even with the feeding, she had been doing she only had a couple dozen Nightmares at the moment, though that number was growing quickly. She was strong, but she doubted that she would be able to pit herself against the likes of Lung or Hookwolf and live to tell the tale. So she fell back on a lesson that her mom had taught her when she was younger.

If you find yourself confronted with a problem too big for you to solve, break it down into smaller problems and you might find the solution. Of course, Boogeyman doubted that her mom was thinking about taking on gangs when she was helping with her math homework but the lesson still applied.

She couldn't take the Empire of the ABB on now, it would most certainly be suicide. But just because she couldn't take out the biggest players yet that didn't mean that there weren't smaller gangs that she couldn't take out first.

One of the reasons that she had chosen to target the Merchants instead of the Empire or ABB was because they were almost universally despised. They were considered to be the scum of the Bay, even by the other gangs. However many drugs the Empire and ABB sold the Merchants sold more, and worse ones. However violent and desperate their foot soldiers were the Merchants were more so. They weren't comprised under a single ideology or the fear of one parahuman, but their collective desire for drugs and other illicit ventures. They were hedonistic slaves to their desires and didn't care about anything but their next fix.

One of the other reasons that Boogeyman had chosen to target them first was because of their organizational structure. From what Boogeyman had read trawling the PHO forums, unlike the other gangs they didn't really have a strict organizational structure. They had lieutenants of sorts that answered to Skidmark and the other parahumans that ran the gang, but they were constantly changing, constantly in flux. If the police captured one lieutenant, then Skidmark would just choose another mook to do his bidding through without much of a fuss. They were less lieutenants and more errand boys. It made it almost impossible to make any real operational damage against the gang without taking out their parahumans.

Which also proved to be the gang's greatest weakness. Without Skidmark, Squealer and the now near catatonic Mush the gang would fall apart. The gang would dissolve into groups bickering over what to do and who was in charge. It was what her entire plan hinged on to work. Boogeyman knew that the PRT and Protectorate had to know this, they had thinkers, both parahuman and not, that were far smarter than her. There was absolutely no reason that they couldn't have figured out how to remove the Merchants. It wasn't like anyone was going to miss them. So why hadn't they taken them down already?

"I don't suppose you have any ideas do you?" Boogeyman asked as she stroked her steed's snout. The sand had a very strange texture, rough but smooth, elastic but solid. It gave under the pressure of her fingers a little bit, but she could still tell that the Nightmare in question was more than capable of mauling a man, as evidenced by what they did to Mush.

The Nightmare in question only snorted in response.

"I thought not," she murmured as she continued to pet the Nightmare, Emma's Nightmare to be precise. The Nightmare had grown in size at a rate that had astounded her. Within a few hours, it went from the size of a small cat to being one of the largest Nightmares in her herd. Even knowing how much Emma had given herself into her fears it still surprised Boogeyman how fast the creature had grown.

On occasions like this one, she would find herself talking to it even though she knew that it was incapable of responding and even if it did was it probably wouldn't care about anything except feeding. She supposed it said something about her that the closest thing she had to a friend was the personification of her ex-best friend's fears.

"But why?" she asked, bringing her attention back from her personal steed and to the question at hand. As far as the Boogeyman could tell the Merchants didn't really have anything going for them that could prevent the PRT from taking them out in one fell swoop. While their three, no two capes weren't exactly weak they weren't the brightest bulbs in the sockets by any stretch of the imagination. Skidmark certainly had a low cunning based on the fact that he had survived this long in Brockton Bay with the likes of the Empire and the ABB trying to crush the life out of him, but it still didn't add up.

From what Boogeyman had found most of the Merchant's parahumans weren't suited for dealing with surprise attacks or quick battles. They all required a certain amount of time to build up their power enough to actually become a significant threat. Skidmark needed time to stack his strips on top of one another to exert sufficient force and Squealer needed time to build her vehicles and unlike Lung who also needed to build up steam they didn't have anyone with an easily spammable power to run interference for them during the early fight.

The PRT could have set up an ambush at any time and wipe them off the face of the map but they didn't. The research she had done had shown that the PRT knew that they weren't in control anymore, but she had never witnessed them actually try to _get back_ in control at all. Boogeyman knew that they practically worshiped the status quo and PR, but could they be that worried about rocking the boat that they didn't want to risk changing anything. Were they really that concerned about maintaining the illusion of control than actually achieving control?

Deep down, past all the layers of resentment and anger the little girl that had once been Taylor Hebert, the girl who had dressed up in her Alexandria costume for over a week after Halloween wanted to scream no. That the heroes were doing everything they could to stop the bad guys and save the city. But the woman who was now Boogeyman ignored that voice.

"I suppose it doesn't matter why they're doing it does it," Boogeyman asked. Emma's Nightmare neighed again in agreement. In the end, it didn't matter. She was going to make a difference, not the Protectorate. She was going to drive out the gangs from the city, not the Protectorate. _She_ was going to fix this broken and dying city, not the Protectorate.

As she remounted her steed Boogeyman stared out at the city.

If one simply looked at the docks they could see the difference between it and downtown. Only a smattering of lights from houses and other assorted buildings could be seen in the distance, whether it was from wear and tear or the owner's option to keep it from being seen as a target, but there was a significant difference from the downtown area. Downtown was lit up like a Christmas tree, signs of life emitting from every corner of every building. A sign of the wealth and the assurance of safety that they possessed, totally unconcerned about the suffering of those only a few miles away.

But for all of the wealth those who lived in downtown possessed, even they couldn't escape the slow but inexorable death grip that was strangling the city with its vicious uncaring claws. The city was dying, there was no denying that fact, but it wasn't dead. People like her father and mother had put their lives into trying to better this city through whatever means they could. Whether it was just spending an extra hour or two after class to assist a troubled student, or to try year after year to revitalize the ferry they had never given up on this city.

And neither would she.

She wouldn't allow the Protectorate's uncaring nature to destroy her home.

"Come on," Boogeyman said, her yellow eyes filled with a new light as she tugged on her steed's reigns. "We still have work to do."

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	4. Foreboding 1-3

**Enjoy!**

Foreboding 1.3

Three days.

That's how long it had taken Skidmark and the rest of the Merchants to realized that whoever was attacking them wasn't going to stop. Three days of constant attack every night from her Nightmares with her occasional personal intervention. Dozens of Merchants put into the hospital and scared half to death. Many wouldn't be walking again anytime soon while others were traumatized for life by the nightmares she set loose on them. But even with Mush's mauling and subsequent arrest two days ago there had still been no real reaction from the Merchants other than the occasional pistol which proved to be mostly useless against her Nightmares.

Boogeyman supposed she shouldn't be too surprised at Skidmark's delayed reaction, the man had probably been high on drugs so much he didn't even realize his gang was being bled out. Of course, it might have also had something to do with the fact that the PRT hadn't announced Mush's hospitalization to the public quite yet. She wasn't exactly sure what their logic was behind that, she would have thought they would want to announce to the world that they had "captured" a villain in order to bolster their PR.

Though Boogeyman couldn't deny that it had been useful to her. If Skidmark had moved earlier then she might not have gotten enough Nightmares to complete the next phase of her plan. The delayed reaction from Skidmark had given her enough time to gather some more strength and pad the numbers of her herd.

An hour or so ago she had found a stray Merchant that had been packing far more weaponry than any of his compatriots had before. After a little encouragement, she managed to get some information out of him. It appeared that in response to her attacks Skidmark had called a meeting and was planning on dealing with the threat. Merchants from all around their territory would be banding together to take her on.

It would have been rude of her to not oblige his challenge.

She watched with barely constrained anticipation as more and more Merchants slunk into the warehouse they were using for their meeting grounds. It was almost as run down as the one she was using, but none of the Merchants seemed particularly concerned about that. Judging by the fear rolling off of them they were all too glad to answer their leader's call after seeing so many of their fellows attacked.

"Wait for the signal," She said, pushing the command into the minds of her Nightmares. The demonic horses had multiplied in number the last few days, she had gone from a dozen or so to almost a hundred. Her own strength had grown as well, she was stronger, faster, and she was pretty sure she had grown an inch or two as well.

Her Nightmares neighed in response as they pawed the ground with their hooves in eager anticipation. This was the feast she had been promising. After this, they wouldn't be stuck to scavenging off lone drug dealers or isolated groups. She could feel at least forty or fifty gang members in the building, their individual fears coated the area in a thick fog to her senses, like smoke rising from a fire. Boogeyman could admit to herself that the thought of feeding off that many fears was appealing to her as well.

Her personal Nightmare, who she had chosen to name Phobia, brushed its snout against her arm while it neighed, hunger gnawing at its insides. Boogeyman absently patted its snout in a calming gesture. It might have been a mistake to give a name to a projection that would probably be destroyed in the coming days, but it gave her the illusion that she was actually talking to a real person and not a mindless drone.

"You'll all get your meal, but wait," Boogeyman reiterated. She didn't think it would be too much of an issue, the Nightmares had been following her instructions to the letter, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. She didn't want them to interrupt her while she was working.

Boogeyman allowed herself to become two-dimensional, nothing more than another shadow across the pavement. She clung to the dark edges around the few working streetlights, careful not to draw any attention to herself.

As a Merchant passed by she dived into his shadow, becoming indistinguishable as a shape other than a slightly darker spot. The smell of drugs and garbage clung to the homeless looking man like a second skin. She almost felt sorry for his sad state but it was quickly crushed under the revulsion she felt for his very being. He wasn't afraid of getting attacked or not having a roof over his head, all he was afraid off was not getting his next fix.

 _How many have you hurt for your abominable desires?_ Boogeyman thought with no small amount of contempt. People like him only cared about having their immediate desires satisfied, even if the city burned around them.

As they passed through the warehouse doors she found that the inside of the building was actually less lit up than the outside. She detached herself from the man's shadow and climbed up the walls, giving her a vantage point to look over the proceedings.

The Merchants had formed up into a huddled mass, whispering, and muttering and they jostled each other around nervously. Boogeyman couldn't make out what it was they were saying but she got the general idea- they were afraid.

"Listen up!" The man that took the makeshift wooden stage at the end of the warehouse looked like what someone would use for a PSA on drug use. His cheeks were sunken in and his gums and teeth were rotted out. She could see at least a dozen injections sites covering his rail thin arms. His eyes were bloodshot and wild, flickering around the room with sudden jerky movements.

Boogeyman was a tiny bit impressed, Skidmark actually looked _worse_ than the PHO forums made him out to be.

His costume was laughably minimal, a simple mask that didn't even bother to cover his iris was strapped across his face. Squealer looked like she had a more coherent costume and all she was wearing was some stereotypical slut wear with a barely concealing tank top and a skirt that might have well not existed. Said Tinker had taken her place next to her boyfriend (and didn't that make the bile rise up in her nonexistent mouth of the thought of someone willingly kissing that face) and seemed content to stare out at the crowd and appeared to be rather lost in thought.

 _How have the Protectorate not caught them?_ Boogeyman wondered to herself. It wasn't like the Merchants were the Empire with over fifteen capes and international support or Lung who had fought an Endbringer to a standstill. They were a group of hedonists with only three capes that were capable of any appreciable damage and two of them needed time to build up to reach lethal levels.

"Some ass thinks he can take us on," Skidmark continued, oblivious as the rest of the building to the threat that lurked with them. The muttering in the assembled Merchants grew, the pitch of concern becoming sharper and more defined as their fears became more solid. They had all known that they were afraid of something, but having it admitted out loud, and by their leader no less made the fear they felt become more pronounced, more real.

"Now we gonna screw him up!" Skidmark shouted shrilly as he waved a sawed-off shotgun. Boogeyman watched as the Merchants began to shout incoherently at their leader's declaration, but she could still feel the fear hiding behind the thin layer of bravado.

This wasn't like the PRT and Protectorate making a move, or one of the other gangs muscling in on their territory as downtrodden as it was. They had no idea who was behind these attacks or what they were capable of. Her attacks had varied from viciously mauling her targets or breaking them down through psychological attacks until all that was left was a gibbering wreck afraid of their own shadow. None of the Merchants had ever dealt with something like this before and had absolutely no idea what the limits of her powers were, or if there might be worse fates in store for them.

The uncertainty clawed at their thoughts and influenced every action. As drug-addled as they were even the Merchants knew that calling forth a gathering this big would rain down punishment from the heroes and the villains. But they were afraid, and scared people didn't make decisions that were rational.

She could have left them like this, allowed them to go on their rampage and burn themselves out as the heroes beat them back and villains retaliated against their enterprises. But that would have left innocent civilians in harm's way and while the heroes were most certainly capable of allowing those they were obligated to protect be hurt for their own safety she wasn't. She was never going to allow a civilian to be willingly harmed by anything that she put into motion.

Even then there were other options, she could have slit Skidmark's throat while he was sleeping and be done with it, but this was bigger than just removing a single gang from play- this was a message. This was going to be her statement, that it didn't matter how many people they gathered or what powers they wielded, nothing was going to protect the gangs from her wrath. They would cower before her or fall.

Boogeyman stretched her form out and pinched one of the shadows of the flickering lights between her two of her adumbrated fingers. The group below her jumped back as the light sparked and died, bits of glass falling to the floor.

"What the f-"

Skidmark's explicative was cut off as Boogeyman crushed another light with her shadowy fingers, plunging even more of the room into darkness. Then she started laughing.

She could feel the fear of the Merchants spike as her bone chilling laughter filled the room, modulating from a small child's to an old man's voice and everything in-between. The tension grew as one of the more nervous Merchant's fired his pistol into the air. The small caliber round embedded itself in the ceiling, sending shards and splinters of wood to the floor. The brief muzzle flash revealed her shadowy form for all to see for the briefest of moments before fading back into the darkness.

"Get down here," Skidmark growled as he brandished his shotgun at the now dark ceiling, but he didn't activate his power. It made sense she supposed, from what she knew once he had placed his strips he couldn't move them, so trying to set them up for an enemy he couldn't see would have been an exercise in futility.

"Do you hear me?! Get down here so we can teach you what it means to mess with the Merchants," Skidmark growled out. Boogeyman could feel the assembled Merchant's bloodlust rise a bit at that declaration, but it was largely overshadowed by the fear that was consuming their minds. Idly she wondered if Skidmark actually thought that making that threat would really work when he obviously had no control over the situation.

Boogeyman allowed the light that illuminated the stage to remain intact if only for the next part. "Is that what you'll do _Skidmark?"_ She hissed, her voice coming from everywhere and nowhere as she circled the stage just beyond the rim of the last light. The addict's cape name dripped with such contempt that Boogeyman was surprised the floor didn't melt underneath her at that moment.

"Babe…" Squealer tried to interject. She wrung her welding torch tightly as her heart rate soared. Boogeyman could feel the vulnerability that Squealer felt for being so exposed to an unknown cape without her tinker tech assistance.

"Not now," Skidmark said through grit teeth. He put on a good show for his followers but Boogeyman could see the sweat on his brow and the dilation of his eyes. He was just as afraid as the rest of them. Good.

"Is that what you'll do? Teach me a lesson?" Boogeyman said in an imitation of Skidmark's voice. She relished the flinch that the man tried to suppress.

"You've made a big mistake coming here," Skidmark said as his grip on his gun tightened. "We gonna beat you down ain't we boys?" But instead of the resounding cheers that he had surely been expecting all he got were a few halfhearted responses as the Merchants nervously shuffled in place.

Boogeyman chuckled, "Now Skidmark, how are you going to fight something you can't see?"

Skidmark fired off a shotgun blast into the darkness. It missed Boogeyman by a mile, but the group of Merchants that had been standing too close to the stage weren't so lucky. Boogeyman watched with a cool detachment as they fell to the ground screaming, choking on blood and lead. Those closest to them and the stage started to back up.

"Who do you think you are," Skidmark shouted, spittle flying out from his mouth. Boogeyman allowed her shadowy form to enter the light and cling to the wall. She heard gaps as she inflated herself to be as big as possible, towering over the assembled Merchants. Skidmark shot off another shotgun shell into her form, but she was too intangible for it to actually do anything other than smashing the wood beneath her.

"Tell me Skidmark," Boogeyman hissed. As said parahuman backed up, desperately trying to load another shell she retook her physical form on the stage. Skidmark raised the half loaded shotgun, to do what with it, she wasn't sure, but she didn't give herself the opportunity to find out instead she formed a whip out of her sand and knocked him off the stage with a deafening crack.

"Baby," Squealer shouted in alarm as she raced over to her boyfriend. Skidmark's shirt had been ripped open by the whip, and a long angry mark was left across his chest. Boogeyman gave them the most disturbing slasher smile she could muster and judging by their elevated heart rates it was pretty good.

"Do you believe in the _Boogeyman_?"

At that moment the doors to the warehouse burst open as her small army of Nightmares made their entrance. There were so many of them that they became a single indistinguishable mass of sand and shadow as they crashed into the assembled Merchants. Boogeyman grinned as the fear that they had so been desperately trying to conceal revealed itself in the form of their panicked screams. A few of the slightly braver, or perhaps dumber, ones tried to fight the back mass of demonic horses.

It didn't end well for them. The small caliber fire they unloaded into the herd was nothing more than an annoyance and none of the melee weapons they had could hit the horses with enough force to disperse them. One of the Merchants that had a shotgun managed to get off a hit and made one of the Nightmares collapse into a pile of dust as dozens of tiny pellets ripped through the beast's head. The Merchant's victory fell short as two more Nightmare charged forward to replace their fallen comrade. They fell screaming as the Nightmares descended upon them, eager to feed off the fear of so many.

Boogeyman could see that a few of the smarter and more cowardly Merchants were trying to make an escape, but they were cut short as another group of Nightmares surrounded them, their glowing yellow eyes daring them to try something.

"I'm gonna kill you!"

 _"Ah right, Skidmark,"_ Boogeyman mentally chastised herself for getting so caught up in the buffet that she had ignored her actual targets.

Skidmark had lost his shotgun, but he seemed undeterred as he stared her down. The fear that he was feeling towards her and the Nightmares was now largely overshadowed by his rage. His eyes were bloodshot, veins nearly pulsing along his arms as he tried to grind what few teeth he had left to demonstrate the sheer rolling ball of anger that was eating away at his insides.

"I'm gonna kill you," the addicted shaker shouted again. It might have been a bit intimidating if his arms weren't like built like twigs and his clothing wasn't about half a size too big for him. It was like watching a Chihuahua bark at a Great Dane. Humorous to be certain, but there was really only one way it was going to end. She had put far too much effort into this to be stopped by someone like Skidmark.

Boogeyman smiled, revealing her fang-like off colored teeth that seemed to shine in the faint lighting of the warehouse. "You can try."

Skidmark roared at her dismissal of his threat, his arms shaking in fury. Boogeyman watched as a strip of blue energy appeared midair between the two of them. It was thin, barely the thickness of a piece of paper, but then another one was layered on top of it, then another, and another…

Boogeyman could feel the force that the strips were exerting start increasing as Skidmark layered more and more on top of each other. She quickly moved to her shadow form and felt the pressure that had been building up on her chest evaporate.

Her form slithered under the power strips and Skidmark's legs. Even as she erupted into physical form once again she willed her sand to form a scythe that was about as tall as she was yet was virtually weightless. Its black grains seemed to draw in the surrounding light and its serrated edges appeared sharp enough to cut through solid rock. As it swung, whistling through the air Boogeyman shifted her stance slightly, adjusting her aim for the man's exposed neck.

What happened next surprised her.

Perhaps Skidmark wasn't as stupid as his appearance suggested or perhaps he just had good survival instincts, but as the edge of the blade sliced through the air, the Merchant leader allowed himself to fall to the ground. What should have been a killing blow swung over the Merchant's prone body and threw Boogeyman off balance as the resistance that she had been anticipating from the man's spine vanished.

It was all she could do to keep herself from falling over as Skidmark rolled back up to his feet, his discarded shotgun in hand, mouth stretched into a sadistic grin.

"Bye-bye," he said as he squeezed the trigger.

Boogeyman didn't even have time to blink as a twelve-gauge shotgun round blasted into her chest. Her chest ignited in fiery agony as she fell to the ground gasping for breath. Her scythe shattered into a million grains of sand as her concentration lapsed even as the shards of metal that had embedded themselves in her flesh were pushed out. As she laid stunned on the floor Skidmark approached her with a swagger to his step.

"Now what were you going to do?" he asked with a mocking smile as he waved the shotgun in her face. Boogeyman's eyes narrowed as she pushed past the pain to glare at the Merchant. Despite himself, Skidmark took a step back at the sight of a glare that was as cold and chilling as a Siberian night. His palms were greased in sweat as he adjusted his grip on his gun, making sure to aim directly at her skull.

"Don't you try-"

Skidmark was cut off as Boogeyman allowed herself to lose her physical form once more and become nothing more than an intangible shadow. Skidmark let loose the second round in the chamber, but all it did was temporarily blind him as rock and cement blasted out from the impact sight and into his face, completely ignoring the cape before him.

Boogeyman took her physical form a few feet in front of him as she clutched her chest. The pain that had come from the shotgun blast was gone, proving her theory that she was getting more durable, though she would have preferred have tested it in some other way.

Getting shot hurt.

Though she supposed that would have killed her if she had been weaker so she should probably count herself lucky.

At any rate, this wasn't time to analyze her powers, not in the heat of battle. She reformed her scythe as Skidmark finished wiping his eyes of any debris. Boogeyman saw them widen as her curved blade swung forward in its deadly arc. The Merchant instinctively raised his hands to shield his more valuable head from injury even as he started to back up.

A futile gesture.

Skidmark fell to the ground screaming as he clutched the empty stump that had once been his right hand while his shotgun clattered to the floor uselessly. His shrill screams mixed in rather nicely with all of the other screaming Merchants.

Boogeyman approached him slowly, confidently, hiding the fact that his surprise attack had spooked her. She towered over the fallen parahuman as tears and snot streaked down his face, mixing into a salty mucus liquid even as more precious blood erupted from his severed stump.

"Now what was it you were going to do _Adam?_ " she asked with a vicious sneer. Her nose wrinkled a bit at the smell of ammonia and she had to forcibly keep herself from rolling her eyes at the dark stain spreading down his trousers. She could feel the fear rolling off of him in waves as his fright-filled eyes stared at her. She could almost physically feel his heart trying to burst out his chest as he tried to scoot backwards to escape from her wrath. She could still feel the anger and indignation of her actions, but it was completely dominated by his overwhelming fear of her.

And thus the true drug lord of Brocton Bay revealed his true self, not a merciless coldhearted killer, but a coward lashing out at the world around him.

"W-wha'do want," Skidmark managed to get out through the choked sobs of pain that wracked his body.

Boogeyman only smirked.

"Your head."

She gave him a split second to realize what she was about to do before she swung her blade. She could see his eyes widening and his lips opening in half formed pleads for mercy but she ignored them. People like him didn't deserve mercy.

Blood splattered the ground as his head rolled away from his body, his terror filled expression frozen on his face forever. The Merchant's body twitched a bit as if it hadn't realized it was dead yet and was still trying to complete the last thing it had been trying to do. But as more blood squirted out from his nonexistence neck and dominant hand it slumped to the ground completely.

Perhaps not as satisfying as breaking him down piece by piece until nothing remained but an empty shell, but such efforts would have been lost on the man. All he understood was pain and violence and so she obliged him. The part of her that had once been Taylor Hebert seemed to churn at the sight of the dead man but she ignored it. Skidmark had been a disease eating away at the city without any thought for those he harmed. The world would be better off without his taint.

Boogeyman turned back towards the chaos behind her. The Merchants that were the closest to her and had witnessed what she had just done to their leader were cowering on the ground as her Nightmares surrounded them. A few more of the Merchants looked like they still had some fight in their eyes, but a quick growl from a Nightmare or two was enough to subdue them into submission. There was more than one body that was clearly dead, one looked like her Nightmares had gotten a little too eager in trying send him into a state of terror through the removal of nonessential body parts and one looked like he had just dropped dead. As she took a rough count of the Merchants she wondered if he had literally died of fear. She was curious to what his autopsy would show.

It was then as she examined the Merchants who had surrendered that she noticed someone in particular was missing.

"Where's Squealer?"

There was a roar like thunder and half a second later part of the building collapsed as the lovechild of a monster truck and a tank erupted through the wreckage. It wheels were beyond massive, towering over her by a good four feet. Decorative spikes shot out from the rims while even more were placed along the haphazardly placed armor that covered the mechanical monstrosity. A single massive cannon barrel hovered menacingly over the vehicle's main body like something out of a science fiction fantasy movie. Boogeyman held back a wince at the screams of the unfortunate Merchants and Nightmares that were caught in Squealer's path, crushed underneath the massive wheels of the metal eyesore.

"…never mind."

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	5. Foreboding 1-b

**Enjoy!**

Foreboding 1.b

"Do you believe in the _Boogeyman?_ "

Squealer couldn't hold back her shiver of fear as the corpse-pale cape gave them one of the most disturbing smiles she had ever seen, mouth far too wide and teeth far too sharp than they had any right to be.

Her feelings of dread only redoubled as the doors to the warehouse were thrown off their half rusted hinges by a wave of black matter. Her heart caught in her throat as the mass moved like a living being as it crashed into the panicking Merchants. Glowing yellow eyes and far too many midnight black teeth tore out of the wave and became smaller but no less disturbing horse-shaped figures whose skin gave off an unnatural shimmer in the near lightless building.

Squealer winced a bit as Skidmark gripped her arm in an effort to pull himself up. It wasn't that strong of a grip compared to when he would punish her for her behavior, but she wouldn't be surprised if she got some bruises.

"Get the tank," Skidmark growled as he glared at the cape who took no notice of him, seemingly lost in her own little world as she gazed down onto the carnage with something akin to satisfaction. "Let's wreck him."

Squealer pursed her lips at the thought of wasting her baby's grand appearance on some no name like this. Such events were meant to be savored with a low satisfaction of watching everything and everyone around you shake with uncontained fear as you unveiled your new power. Using it to crush this single cape and her army would be a waste of a perfectly good entrance. "What about-"

She was cut off by a rough shove from Skidmark and shrunk in on herself at the angry look he gave her. "Go get the tank," he said, his eyes lighting with a slight maniac gleam. Squealer fearfully nodded in compliance as she slowly backed out of his reach. Skidmark was a good boyfriend and gave her some great sex, but he had this annoying habit of hitting her whenever he was angry. She knew he loved her but it got pretty irritating at times to have to pay attention to his moods so she wouldn't get hit. Still, he was right, now wasn't the time for her to argue with him about using her vehicles.

Even if it was such a waste.

"I'm gonna kill you!" Skidmark roared as he approached the cape. The woman's uncomfortably yellow eyes locked on Skidmark's form as Squealer raced out of her field of vision. While the rest of the fairly idiotic Merchants were still trying to futilely push their way past the demonic horses that blocked their way to the doors Squealer made her way to the side of the building.

Whenever Skidmark had meetings that were made up of more than a handful people he would always make sure to have at least one secondary exit for the two of them, a policy that had saved their skins more than once from heroes and villains alike. Squealer pressed her hands against the ancient corrugated metal siding and pushed.

A rectangular section of the wall about four feet tall and wide that she had carved into with her personal welding torch not but a few hours earlier popped off and fell to the ground with a clang that was covered up by the sound of the terror filled screams of the Merchants. As she squeezed through the smallish hole in the wall she knew that Skidmark would be okay. She knew that he was more than capable of taking care of himself and had waxed more than a few upstarts that had tried to usurp his position over the years, but it was always a nerve-wracking experience for her. The thought of Skids, the only person in the world that had treated her with an ounce of respect, getting hurt by some no name bitch weighed heavily on her mind.

She would make sure that this newbie learned the price of messing with her boyfriend.

The thought of the bitch's smug smile fading as she was crushed underneath tons of steel brought a smile to her own face. She only hoped that Skidmark wouldn't get hurt. The last time he had been out of commission for an extended period they hadn't been able to have sex for a couple months.

Squealer tried to cast those unwanted thoughts out of the forefront of her mind as she raced over to one of the adjacent buildings. She could feel her heart beating against her ribcage as more screams echoed out of the hole she had left, grating against her eardrums like a symphony of the damned as she approached a nearby warehouse.

The side entrance to the warehouse fell open as her body slammed against it, the rusted lock absolutely no match for the force she exerted with her shoulder. Compared to the meeting place the warehouse was in pretty good condition comparatively. It had been one of the things she had insisted on when she had helped Skids pick the meeting place, she didn't want some homeless junkie to wander in and take a piss on her baby, or even worse, have the building fall down on top of it when she started it.

The behemoth of a vehicle that sat in the darkness was the culmination of months of work. Just getting the necessary supplies and raw material to build her without raising any flags had taken almost two months. Actual construction had been in the timeframe of around four to five months and she still wasn't completely finished, at least in her mind. She had wanted to add two more fusion cannons on the rotating turret to give her baby 360-degree coverage, but Skids had balked at the price tag she had given him for the materials to build two more. She could understand his frustration, she had already sunk what was probably around a million or two dollars into her baby, but she still held true to the idea that the price tag would be well worth it.

With her baby, they would be capable of taking on _Lung_. Wasn't that worth spending some money?

Squealer ducked under the bottom of her baby and pulled the entrance hatch open. A small ladder slid out that she quickly climbed up as she tried to ignore the nervous sweat breaking out all over her palms.

Despite her assurances to Skids that her baby would work she had never actually tried to turn her on. Oh, she had done systems checks on the cannon and driven her around a few times as a test run, but she had never actually had them all on at once. In theory, the reactor that she had installed should be enough to power the enormous energy consumption her baby needed to function, but she had found out about two weeks ago that the uranium rods that she had received were of far lesser quality than she had originally ordered. She wasn't entirely sure that the reactor would be able to handle the strain of the fusion cannon in addition to running the other systems.

Maybe if she redistributed the power draw then-

" _Focus_ ," Squealer thought to herself as she strapped herself in. This wasn't the time to get lost in tinkering, her boyfriend was counting on her to bring the cavalry, and while she would have preferred to spend some more time on her baby to fix all the bugs she didn't really have an option. Armsbastard had trashed her motorbike last month which left her without any working vehicles. As of this moment, this tank was the only complete creation she had. It still felt wrong to have to ruin her grand unveiling of what was sure to be her greatest creation on this admittedly very scary upstart but her boyfriend was in trouble.

"C'mon," Squealer chanted under her breath as she activated the tank for the first time. She held her breath as the control panel flickered for a few seconds before powering up in full. The drug addicted tinker let out a triumphant cheer as all the systems came on without any issue, even the fusion cannon. Squealer could feel the hum throughout the vehicle as the multi-gigawatt cannon activated.

"Haha," Squealer laughed manically, "Let's see who's scary now!"

The tank erupted forward, shaking the earth as if a thousand wildebeests were stampeding through, its roar the cry of an angry dragon. The sheet metal that made up the warehouse structure didn't even last a second against the mechanical monstrosities' forward charge, instead, it smashed apart the building with the ease a child would knock over a sandcastle. But even with part of the building's roof collapsing on the tank, it was unmolested by the debris.

Squealer let out another slightly insane laugh as she crashed through the meeting place's wall. The look of shock on the bitch parahuman's face was something to relish as it was plastered in high definition video feed on her twenty-inch screen.

"What are you going to do now?" Squealer asked through the external speakers as her fusion cannon fired a warning shot. Purplish energy crackled along the barrel for a split second before a solid beam of purple energy shot out from the cannon like the wrath of an angry god. Squealer laughed in elation as the beam cut through the building like it was a knife going through butter. Her sense of excitement only heightened as her cameras angled themselves to look through the smoking hole it had left behind. From there she could see that it had not only plowed through the next building, but it had kept on going until she couldn't make it out anymore.

This was real power.

Squealer adjusted the cannon's angle to lock onto the still stunned cape who remained motionless in front of the clearly dead body lying behind her. Squealer couldn't make out who it was with the way the cape was standing but it probably wasn't anyone important. Squealer cursed as the cape vanished from her targeting sensors, revealing the decapitated head of the corpse.

Sherrel Bailey's blood froze.

Staring back at her were the empty eyes of Skidmark, his face frozen in an expression of pure terror. Squealer felt her heart clench up as blood from her boyfriend's headless corpse poured out onto the stained floor.

"nononono."

Squealer could barely hear her whispers of denial as the truth laid in front of her.

Skidmark was dead.

 _Adam_ was dead.

 _He was dead._

"NO!" She screamed as sorrow turned to anger and she slammed down on the fire button. She couldn't' have that- that _body_ staring at her, mocking her, judging her. The fusion cannon's lance of energy struck the corpse with such power that it didn't just burn, it disintegrated on a virtually molecular level, becoming nothing more than superheated dust.

"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!" She roared in anger as she swung the beam around in a blind arc, searching for the killer of her lover. The only man who had ever shown her kindness and given her freedom.

Her attack was indiscriminate, both Merchant foot soldiers and nightmarish horses fell before the power of her fusion cannon. Even those who avoided the lance of energy didn't emerge unscathed, the sheer heat emanating from the fusion cannon was enough to turn the sand horses into pure glass with a pass, freezing them into warped statues. A few more Merchants were just as unlucky, their clothing and hair igniting into flames as their skin melted, only adding fuel to the fire of panic. Squealer's vision blurred as angry tears gathered in her eyes. She had to find that bitch, she had to make her pay.

The warehouse before her was chaos incarnate as Merchants tried to escape their captors and the fury of their enraged tinker. They pushed and shoved and fought each other just as much as the horses. Squealer growled, teeth grinding against each other as there was still no sign of the murderer. She could hear dozens of horses pounded against her armour plating as they tried to crack it open like a walnut. Not that it would do them any good, she had designed this thing to withstand punishment from an amped up Lung, there was no way they were getting through that.

"Show yourself," Squealer shouted, her speaker amplifying her roar of rage and anguish so loudly that the entire building seemed to quake.

"I thought you might have shown more appreciation."

Squealer scrambled out of the pilot seat and harness so fast she might have gotten a mover rating for it. Her hands flew up as they wrapped around the cold grip of her personal pistol as her eyes flickered around the cockpit, looking for any sign of the murderer.

"I mean, I did kill Skidmark for you," the voice said, almost as if it was offended that Squealer wasn't thanking her for killing her lover.

"Come out so I can put a bullet in your brain," Squealer growled as she slowly circled the cockpit. She resisted the urge to fire towards the echoing laughter that filled the tank. If she missed she was likely to get hit by a ricochet, or worse the bullet could damage any number of the power conduits and cause a feedback to the reactor. The resulting explosion wouldn't just blow up the tank, it would practically vaporize everything within a two-block radius.

"As…tempting as your offer is I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline," the cape said with an amused tone, as if their entire thing was just one big joke as if what she just did to Adam didn't even matter.

"You're not getting out of here, not for what you did to Adam," Squealer said as she cautiously checked under one of the control panels for any sign of the intruder. All she saw were the shadows produced by the brightly lit bulb in the center of the cockpit. She couldn't let this bitch get away, she needed to make her pay for what she did to Adam.

"I honestly don't get why you're so upset, you should be overjoyed that I freed you from Adam's control," the cape said in what sounded like an honestly confused tone as if she couldn't comprehend what someone would be upset that their lover had just been killed in cold blood.

"You don't get to say his name," Squealer growled, her fingers squeezing the grip of her pistol so tight that she could feel the grooves digging into her calloused palm like tiny knives.

"And may I ask what Ada- my bad, Skidmark did to earn such loyalty from you," the cape asked. Squealer whirled around just in time to see a pair of yellow eyes and sharpened fangs fade back into the shadows.

"He saved me," Squealer screamed as more hot tears gathered in her eyes. "He saved me. He gave me my freedom, he appreciated me, he didn't use me like…like…"

The cape asked the one question that Squealer defiantly didn't want to hear, "Like everyone else?"

Squealer snarled animalistically at the reminder, "You don't know anything."

The cape gave her an amused laugh and it was all Squealer could do to keep a shiver of fear from running down her spine. It was the kind of laugh that one would expect from a psycho killer in a horror movie as he ripped the dumb blonde of the group in half with a sadistic gleam in his eye. That image did little to ease Squealer's nerves as the shadows seemed to grow more oppressive with each passing second.

"Oh, I know more than you could imagine Sherrel," the cape said, her voice circled the chamber, bouncing off of the walls and equipment making it nearly impossible to tell where she was. "I know the fears that haunt you every night, the ones that you try to ignore, that you try to hide from everyone, even yourself."

"But you can't hide them from me," the cape whispered mere inches from her ear. Squealer turned around so fast she felt her spine light on fire as a nerve was pinched. She fired a shot off into the space the cape had previously occupied, her desire to see this cape dead overcoming her caution of firing her pistol inside. The glow from the muzzle flash revealed a glimpse of the cape's shadowy form for a mere second as it dived into another, darker shadow. The bullet slammed through the view screen, cracking and smashing it into a thousand pieces. The cockpit dimmed somewhat without the light from the screen to assist the single light bulb she had placed to illuminate the room.

"Being used, that's what you're afraid of, and you've been used all your life Sherrel," the cape asked in a conversational tone.

Squealer licked her dry lips in nervous anticipation as the voice circled around her like a shark circling its prey. She had gotten lucky that that shot hadn't ricocheted into her own skull or worse, she couldn't allow her emotions to overcome her like that again. Which meant listening to the cape as she pulled her darkest nightmares up to the surface.

"You were used by your friends, Johnson, Alex, by _Timmy_ ," the voice mocked.

"Shut up," Squealer screamed as she tried to cover her ears while maintaining her grip on her pistol, but it did little to shut out the cape's voice. Each word was like a fishhook digging into her skin, into her soul. Memories better left unremembered popped to the forefront of her mind in all their terrible glory. Echoes of angry tantrums and shattering beer bottles filled her ears as images of a man she thought she had loved covered her vision, each one corrupted by the taint of betrayal.

"Even your own family used you, didn't they? Did it hurt when you found mommy dearest pimped you out, or did it happen so often you didn't even note it?" the cape asked, her bodiless voice cool and collected as Squealer continued to shake in rage.

"Stop it," Squealer shouted, voice shrill and slightly unhinged as more and more of the past she had tried to leave behind was dragged up to the surface.

The sound of flesh striking flesh and the sharp pain of a hot red handprint sending her tumbling to the ground made her shiver in fear as memories of the monster that had been her mother came to her vision, the monster in human flesh standing over her, a dead look in her eye as she gave her to the drug dealer.

 _"MOMMY!"_

"Stop," Squealer said, much quieter and more subdued than before. She had left all of this behind when she had triggered when she had gained the ability to run away as far and fast as she wanted to without anyone to stop her. The day she had stopped being Sherrel, the broken little girl whose mother didn't even have the decency to even try and pretend she loved her to Squealer, the vehicle tinker who used her newfound freedom to track down everyone that had betrayed her and leave them as roadkill to be scraped off the street. "Please."

The cape continued to push deeper and deeper into her psyche, undaunted by the Merchant tinker's erratic behavior or her soul aching pleads for mercy. "Then there's Skidmark."

"HE DIDN'T USE ME YOU-" Squealer tirade was cut off as stars filled her vision and her head lit up in pain. She braced herself against one to the consoles, wincing as her elbow dug into the harsh metal controls. Her gun clattered to the floor and out of sight, consumed by the shadows. The cape emerged from the darkness like a nightmare, her corpse pale face twisting into a dismissive sneer. Her eyes glinted in the dim lighting, her irises shining like dark empty pits that she had in the place of a soul. Squealer shivered as the temperature seemed to drop at the unnatural cape's presence.

"You know, I don't know whether to think less of Skidmark for what he did to you or applaud him for convincing you of your own self-centered delusion," the cape said as she approached the downed Merchant, her footsteps reverberating in the chamber. Squealer tried to back away from the cape, but all she did was press herself further against the edge of the cockpit rim, pinned like a bug in a display case.

 _Trapped. Imprisoned. Enslaved._

"I mean, did you really think that Skidmark, one of the vilest and morally deficient people in the entire city would actually care about anything regarding you except for your creations," the cape asked in and almost disbelieving tone, as if she couldn't imagine that Squealer was as thick as she thought.

"You don't know anything," Squealer hissed out in both anger and pain. She could feel something wet and sticky running down the back of her skull as she tried to steady herself and stand up again, but her head was still ringing from the blow the cape had given her. "Skids loved me."

The cape had the gall to roll her eyes at Squealer's proclamation. "Your denial is adorable Sherrel, but we both know you're lying."

Squealer shuddered as she tried to block the cape's voice out again, but her presence was unavoidable, her words clung to her mind and thoughts like noxious fumes. Squealer wouldn't believe the cape; she _couldn't_ believe the cape. Even if Adam had taken her into the Merchants without her consent that didn't mean he didn't love her, he had had his reasons. He had just been making sure someone else didn't find her and use her to their own benefit. He had given her everything she had ever wanted to tinker, supplies she would have never gotten before and all the free drugs she could want.

Adam had given her everything.

Adam was dead.

 _He was dead._

She couldn't let this cape sully his memory, not with all that he had done for her.

"He loved me," Squealer said with an absolute certainty as she drew herself into a fetal position in a futile effort to cut herself off from the world, to hide from the truth that had been laid out before her, that he was gone and never coming back. That this cape had reduced him to nothing more than a lifeless husk fit only to be shoved into the dirt and filth.

"He loved me," she said again, repeating the phrase like a mantra, a lifeline. It was the truth that separated Sherrel and Squealer from each other, the single fact that had helped make her life bearable.

 _He was dead._

Who was she now without Adam? Was she just the blonde dumb ass that nobody cared about, that was only useful as a tool to others? Was all of her tinkering for nothing now? How could it be worth anything if Adam wasn't there to help her, to make it all worthwhile?

He had shown her his appreciation for all she did for him and now he was dead, killed by this upstart. She let out a body racking sob as hot tears stained her vehicle's floor with their salty tang. She…she couldn't…

"Oh Sherrel," the cape said in a somewhat pitying tone. Sherrel, not Squealer this time, looked up to see the cape gazing down at her with a commiserate expression on her unnatural face. "I had hoped that I could break you."

The cape drew her hands back like she was about to swing a baseball as her sand gathered to form one of the sharpest scythes that Sherrel had ever seen. It was so tall that it barely fit in the cockpit, its sharpened back edge scraping against the metal ceiling as the cape raised it high above her head.

"But," the cape continued as her muscles grew tense, "I guess you're too broken to break."

As the cape's form twisted and the scythe sliced through the stale air in its deadly arc Sherrel closed her eyes one last time and prayed that she would be able to be with Adam once more.

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	6. Foreboding 1-4

**Enjoy!**

Foreboding 1.4

Boogeyman watched with cold disappointment as Sherrel's head thumped onto the floor of the cockpit while blood squirted out of her stump of a neck as her body twitched against the cold steel plating.

She hadn't been lying to Sherrel when she had said she would have preferred to break her. A broken parahuman would have been a far better statement than another dead one. She had pulled on the jumbled mess of threads that had been Sherrel's fears of enslavement and imprisonment but in doing so she had found a delusion so thorough that even she couldn't break through it with Sherrel's darkest fears and nightmares, or perhaps it was _because_ of her fear she hadn't been able to break through. Instead, Sherrel had driven herself further and further into denial and Boogeyman didn't have the inclination or the time to spend hours trying to break through the delusional little world Sherrel had built for herself.

" _Pathetic_ ," she thought with no small amount of disdain as she picked the former tinker's head by her long blond hair. Crimson fluids dripped off the severed neck and started to pool on the steel plating beneath her whilst the tinker's empty glassy eyes stared back at her.

She was a little more than half tempted to try and take the tank for herself. The firepower it had demonstrated would have benefited her greatly, but a quick glance around the cockpit dispelled any notion of trying to pilot it. The controls were almost completely indecipherable like Sherrel had thrown them together into a blender and used whatever product came out the other end. It was a mishmash of chaos that gave her a headache just looking at it, never mind trying to use it. She would be more likely to blow up the street. No, as it was such thoughts of driving the tank into an Empire meeting surrounded by her Nightmares would never come to fruition no matter how tempting they were.

But now wasn't the time for idle thoughts, she still had some work to do. She dived into the nearest shadow, dragging Sherrel's head into the shadow realm with her. The trip only lasted a few seconds given the short distance she was traveling, but apparently, even that wasn't healthy for the parahuman's skull. Its features became paler and gaunt like she had been locked in a cellar for a few weeks without any food or sunlight and had all the liquids sucked out of her with a vacuum. It certainly made a disturbing picture of what would happen to any living tissue.

Boogeyman stared at the head in surprise. She hadn't even considered about what traveling through the shadow realm might do to humans. Apparently, it wasn't very healthy. Turning to one of her Nightmares she asked, "I guess it's a good thing that I didn't try to take Squealer alive huh?"

The Nightmare's only response was to snort in thinly veiled amusement.

"Phobia," Boogeyman called out to the small herd of Nightmares standing vigil over the now useless tank. They had given it their all, but Boogeyman didn't notice any significant damage that had been done to the armored monstrosity. She could see a few shallow dents in the amour where they had slammed the entirety of their bodies against it like battering rams, but they were ultimately minuscule compared to the sheer size of the mechanical beast. If it hadn't been for her ability to shadow travel and simply bypass the armor altogether to get to the much squishier tinker the fight might have gone very differently.

It was a sobering thought that even a group as destitute and pathetic as the Merchants could have posed a legitimate threat to her, to say nothing about the other gangs. She would have to be more vigilant in the future to avoid such surprises. There was always going to be that one time that she wouldn't get as lucky as she did this time and she would pay the price. She would need to be more thorough in her investigations of the gangs, the fact that Squealer had managed to hide this creation for some time without the slightest hint reaching anyone spoke of a disturbing level of competence from the Merchants.

If they could hide something like this, then what might the other gangs be hiding? Could the ABB actually have more than two parahumans and Lung was just hiding them from public view? What if Kaiser and the Empire did have access to a tinker and they were just stockpiling their creations? What if Coil had more than just tinker tech armed mercenaries? It was a disturbing notion that the gangs could be hiding things this big in the city and apparently, nobody had noticed at all when the Merchants decided to park a _tank_ in a warehouse with several residential buildings in clear view.

Her personal steed reformed underneath her with a single swift motion. Boogeyman pulled the reins taut with one hand while her other continued to hold the dead parahuman's head. A quick tug on the reigns and the Nightmare trotted outside to where the Merchants were being restrained.

After the initial shock and panic of seeing a giant tinker tech tank blast through the warehouse, Boogeyman had ordered most of her herd to forcibly drag the panicking Merchants out so they wouldn't get killed in the crossfire or try to escape while she was dealing with Squealer.

It wasn't that she particularly cared if any of the Merchants died in the ensuing battle, but she didn't feel like starting her career with an outright massacre. The Merchants in question were in various positions on the ground ranging from rocking in a fetal position to trying and failing, to defiantly staring at her Nightmares. Most of them had the good sense to avoid resisting, but more than a couple had a few more bite marks to signify the price of defiance.

The more injured ones were focused on tending to their wounds or screaming their lungs out as they twitched on the ground in sheer agony. Ironically the most serious injuries didn't come from her or her Nightmares, but rather Squealer's rampage. A great number of the Merchants had been just far enough to avoid being killed by the laser but too close to emerge unscathed. Several were covered in second and third degree burns over most of their bodies. One looked like his skin had just melted off like dirt being sprayed away by a hose. Boogeyman was no expert on burn injuries, but judging by his state he wasn't going to last much longer. Death might even be considered merciful.

The various Nightmares and Merchants ceased their assorted activities to stare at her as she emerged from the husk of what had once been a warehouse. Honestly, she wouldn't be surprised if it collapsed within the next few minutes, the fact that it hadn't when Squealer had torn down that wall was a minor miracle in of itself, but she wasn't concerned with property damage or the Merchant's injuries right now.

She had a message to deliver.

"Skidmark is dead," Boogeyman intoned, her voice echoing through along the nearby buildings. Her superb night vision could pick up a handful of lights coming from various windows in the nearby inhabited buildings, indicating that people were trying to get a recording of the action. Good, she wanted all of Brockton Bay to see what was happening.

"Squealer is dead," she said as she held up Squealer's rotting head so that all the Merchants and onlookers could see. A handful of the Merchants went green at the sight, but all of them had a sharp spike in fear and terror. She allowed the fistful of hair in her hand to slip through her fingers and as she lost her grip the law of gravity took over and Squealer's head fell onto the concrete with sickening thunk. There was a certain finality to the sound, like a gong ringing the end of an era. She would have preferred to have used Skidmark's head since he had been the actual leader of the Merchants but given that his body had been pretty much atomized by Squealer's tank her head would have to do. It wasn't as if it was any less effective than if she had used Skidmark's.

She had to hold back an amused laugh as the head rolled down the slightly sloped concrete towards the Merchants who reacted like cats being threatened with a bath. They pushed and shoved and scrambled backwards at they tried to escape the path of their expired boss's skull. They only made it a few feet backwards before they brushed up against her Nightmares who glared down at them with their glowing yellow eyes, eliciting quite a few shrieks of terror and newly made pant stains.

"The Merchants are _dead_."

She could see them shift uncomfortably as she stared at them with her own yellow eyes. There would be no misunderstandings here. No miscommunications. She had learned the only language they understood- force, and now that she was fluent when she spoke they _would_ listen.

"You are not," Boogeyman kept her feature purposely blank at the swell of hope and relief that coursed through the Merchant's minds at that statement. Their burgeoning hope was quickly crushed by her next statement, "For now."

This time Boogeyman allowed herself to smirk at the new wave of fear that rolled over the assembled gang members. She could see quite a few of them shaking in the back, images of her slicing their heads from their shoulders or letting her Nightmares rip them apart piece by piece filled the minds of more than a few of the Merchants.

"If you wish to remain alive you will not join another gang; nor will you participate in any criminal activities. Many of you will go to jail. Some of you may not for whatever reason," she said. It was an open secret that a large portion of the police force was on the gang's payrolls. Those that weren't were pretty much apathetic to the state of the city altogether, or good people trying to do their jobs and constantly being hamstrung by their own coworkers. Once the Protectorate and PRT handed them over to the BBPD she wouldn't be surprised if more than half of them made it back out onto the streets within the week.

"If you are freed, you will find a job that benefits society or you will leave the city," Boogeyman ordered. A more idealistic person might have tried a softer approach, knowing that many gang members had turned to crime because of the economic decline of the city and the lack of work forced them to join such criminal institutions to survive, but Boogeyman wasn't that person. This city couldn't afford the soft approach anymore, either the criminals stopped being criminals or they would suffer the consequences.

The time for being soft and fair had passed long ago, a fact that the heroes of this city didn't seem to understand. Or perhaps they simply didn't want to understand, they didn't want to admit that their way wasn't working.

"If you do not do this then I _will_ find you. If I find you once then I will maim you. If I find you a second time and you are lucky I will only kill you. If you aren't lucky then I will do far, _far_ worse," Boogeyman said, her chilling voice echoing through the empty street. She could taste the terror that clung to the Merchant's forms like a second skin. She had them, or at least most of them. She felt a handful of the Merchants push past their fear of her enough to become incensed at her instructions, but if she waited a minute then…

"Why should we listen to you?"

Boogeyman turned to the Merchant in question that had apparently decided it was a good idea to speak back to the person that held their lives in the palm of her hands. She recognized him as one of Skidmark's more recent personal lackeys. What she had found online linked him to more than four rapes and a handful of other assorted disappearances. He was big, probably around six feet or so standing up, but she wasn't going to be intimidated by something as trivial as the size of the man's muscle mass when she had the power of fear itself. He gazed up at her angrily even as her Nightmares moved forwards to deal with the fool in an appropriate manner. She gave her herd a mental command to back off.

She would deal with this personally.

The Nightmares relented, pulling back to the edge of the group of subdued gang members much to their collective relief that they weren't going to pay the price for one man's idiocy.

The Merchants hastily parted like the Red Sea as Phobia carried her towards the center of the group where the man was kneeling. She could feel a trickle of fear through his shroud of fury once he realized that she was coming straight for him but she felt him push it back behind the rolling ball of resentment and anger that was consuming his psyche.

"Because I told you to Zack," Boogeyman said, loud enough for the entirety of the assembled Merchants to hear. She could see a flicker of surprise in his eyes at the knowledge that she knew his name but she could see his mouth forming a snarl to bite back at her. "Or I might just give young Jack a visit."

She relished in his horrified expression at the mention of his little half-brother and the fear from thoughts of her killing him or worse entering his mind. Why bother describing what she was going to do when she could let her victim's imaginations fill in the blanks for them? It wasn't like she would actually do anything to a twelve-year-old boy besides a nightmare or two, but Zack didn't know that. As far as he was concerned she had power over the well-being of his little brother and anything he did to anger her would result in something bad happening to him. Sufficiently cowed Zack tried to shrink in on himself as her unnerving gaze held him for a few moments longer. Just to make sure the message got through.

Satisfied, Boogeyman turned her attention back to the whole group. They were staring at her with renewed caution and concern, caution that she did nothing to curb as she gave them a chilling smile.

"Follow these orders and we won't have any problems will we?" Boogeyman asked. She scowled at the few halfhearted replies. " **Will** we?" she asked again, much louder and sterner, the slightest hint of a growl entering her voice. If they rejected the soft velvet of diplomacy they would feel the harsh steel of punishment.

The multitude of terrified positive responses that echoed through the quiet street brought a nasty smile to her face.

"Good, now you're all going to wait here like good little boys and girls until the authorities come to pick you up," Boogeyman said as she tried to keep herself from laughing at the frightened looks on their faces.

As a few of the Merchants started to settle down and try to get a modicum of comfort on the cold asphalt Boogeyman hoped that the Protectorate wouldn't take too long in responding to the phone calls that were no doubt flooding their center. Having a warehouse torn down by a tinker tech tank that was the size of a small building would have attracted attention. What remained for her to see is if the Protectorate would pretend to do their jobs and investigate or assume that this was gang on gang violence and let it go on until the combatants burned each other out. It wasn't like they hadn't done it before. She had better things to do than to stay and watch criminals lay shivering on the street from the freezing breeze and their well-justified terror for hours.

Though she had to admit that the free food she was getting was a pretty decent reward. Now that everything had settled down and she had time to stop and think the difference between her power before and after the assault were obvious. She doubted that she would have survived a shotgun blast to the chest at near point blank range before, yet she did so. It had hurt like shoving molten needles into her chest, but it hadn't given her any lasting damage. What would she be able to do with the fear of a thousand people, or a ten thousand, or even a hundred thousand?

The thought alone was enough to moisten her lips in hunger.

A glint of red brought her out of her thoughts of feeding. The bright red streak that raced down the empty street stood out compared to the far duller and more muted grey and browns of the surrounding buildings. The blur stopped about twenty feet away from and slowed down to reveal the form of a man.

Boogeyman instantly recognized Velocity from a recent news report about the Protectorate breaking up a minor smuggling ring near the docks. His costume was almost ridiculously bright, the only parts that didn't seem to scream "notice me" were the two black racing stripes that arced down his sides and the single black V that covered part of his torso and broke up his profile somewhat. Though she couldn't see most of his face thanks to his helmet and visor she could still see the thin line of his mouth purse as he took stock of the situation.

While she couldn't see where exactly where he was looking at she could feel his nervousness heighten somewhat when he looked in her general direction. It appeared to be some combination of her appearance and the fact that Squealer's head was lying on the ground without the rest of its body. She could see his muscles tense under his skin-tight costume just as her Nightmares started to give the newcomer a hungry eye.

A quick mental command from her stopped them in their tracks. She didn't need to engage with the Protectorate tonight. Doing so now would gain her nothing but the full brunt of the Protectorate and PRT's ire. Satisfied that her Nightmares weren't going to charge him Boogeyman considered what she knew of Velocity.

From what she could remember from trawling PHO forums Velocity was a speedster, which at first glance was a rather versatile power in terms of battle control, but Velocity had a problem in that the faster he went, the less he affected the world around him. It wasn't something the Protectorate had ever confirmed, after all revealing their heroes' weakness and making them realize that they weren't the undefeatable heroes they proclaimed to be would be a big no-no, but years of being in the public eye and speculation by many PHO cape groupies had all but made it an open secret.

A fight between them would theoretically lead to her eventual victory. While she wouldn't be able to hit him while he was moving he wouldn't be able to hit her with any appreciable force as his body lost less and less mass as he moved faster. But while she couldn't hit him that didn't mean her Nightmares couldn't. It would be rather hard for him to dodge even as his blindingly fast speeds when the entire street was covered in writhing mass of living sand.

But if her conflict with the Merchants had taught her anything it was that theory didn't always mix with reality. Velocity was far more experienced than her with years of service and dozens of cape fights under his belt. She was certain that even with his disadvantages he would be able to hold her in place long enough for backup to arrive at the very least or defeat her altogether if he got a few good hits in.

No, for now talking was the best course of action.

"Who are you?" he asked. He was tense, but was avoiding antagonizing her in anyway. She could tell that he was uncertain and wary of her intentions and was trying to ascertain what he could about her goals without seeming combative. His posture was open yet stiff, ready to explode into action at the slightest hint of violence. She could see his chest puff up a little and his shoulders become a little straighter as he tried to make himself a little bit more intimidating to her. She saw a few of the Merchants shrink back a little at the sight of the hero's pose, instinctively reacting to a new parahuman's presence.

Trying to scare her? How adorable.

She gave him a wide smile that revealed all her sharp and somewhat crooked teeth and stretched her corpse pale lips and cheeks far beyond what was humanly possible. "I'm the _Boogeyman_ ," she said as she made her voice as cold and chilling as she possibly could. She felt more than one Merchant shiver in fear at her declaration.

Not simply Boogeyman or a Boogeyman, but _the_ Boogeyman. It was more than a name, more than an alias- it was an idea. She was the monster hiding under the bed and the creature in the closet. She was the thing in the darkness that the criminals would fear.

She could see Velocity purse his lips as if he was trying to figure out what to do with her. His head tilted to the side a little bit, but enough to indicate he was probably listening to someone on the other end of an earpiece. His posture remained stiff but she could see and feel the slightest traces of unease work its way into his system at her identification.

"Are you the one responsible for Mush's hospitalization?" he asked, mouth set into a grim line, no doubt concerned about what he would probably consider excessive brutality.

Boogeyman felt her smile widen even more, to the point it was starting to be a bit uncomfortable. "Why yes I am, did you enjoy my work? I must say I was a little disappointed that you kept it a secret, I was hoping that these fellows here would hear about it," she said as she waved her hand out to the shivering men and woman huddled in fear.

"I suppose I should be angry at you," she continued in a conversational tone, "But I'm in a generous mood today. You can have the rest of the Merchants."

She gave him a sickening smile, "The ones still alive anyway."

One of the younger Merchants let a whimper escape from his lips.

She could see Velocity's muscles tense underneath his costume at her affirmative and rather admittedly unhinged response. But what little expression she could see on his face and feel flowing through his head was conflicted, as if he wasn't quite sure what he was going to do with her. Finally, he sighed, slumping a little as he let some of the tension loose from his shoulders. "Look kid," he said, and Boogeyman bristled at the unspoken connotations. Kids were weak and helpless, unable to do anything for themselves and prone to shortsighted worldviews. They were dependent on others to take care of them and protect them. They didn't- _couldn't_ do anything. "I think that you want to help the city and do the right thing...it," he paused as if he was carefully considering his words to avoid angering her, "it's just that you're just doing it the wrong way, if you come with me the Protectorate can-"

"No," Boogeyman snarled, allowing anger, real anger, to break through her mask for the first time. She could see Velocity blur in place, apparently as surprised as she was by the vehemence of her negative response. "I will not allow myself to be shackled to the ones who have allowed the city to fall so far. You _heroes_ can play all the dress up you want and bury your heads in the sand while the city burns down around you. _I_ won't."

Boogeyman could almost physically feel the contempt that laced her every word and poured out her mouth like a waterfall. She supposed she should have been more in control of her responses, especially for first impressions, but she was not going to let the Protectorate get away with chaining her to the same rules and regulations that let monsters like Skidmark and Hookwolf to roam the streets.

She would rather die than be put in a position where she wouldn't be able to do anything but watch as the world around her went to hell in a handbasket.

She could see Velocity frown at her, apparently upset by her near-violent reaction to his offer. He opened his mouth to speak again by she cut him with a sharp motion of her hand.

"Run back to your masters and tell them that I'm doing what they should have done years ago," Boogeyman sneered as she waved her Nightmares away. She had dallied her for far too long, and while she was confident Velocity _probably_ wasn't going to be able to stop her, she didn't want to risk him pinning her down long enough for another hero that could stop her to show up.

Her Nightmares faded into the shadows and through the cracks in the buildings, disappearing as quickly as they had appeared. Within seconds the street was empty of her demonic minions save Phobia. She could feel a few of the Merchants slump in relief that their tormentors had disappeared, but a quick glare and bared teeth kept them from getting any bright ideas.

They would remember this night for the rest of their lives. This was the night that they would speak in hushed whispers as they gathered around the safety of the open flame while the darkness crept in around them. They would tell this story again and again and let all of Brockton Bay know that the time of the gangs was over.

A tug on Phobia's reigns and her steed moved to ride into the nearly moonless night alongside its brethren.

"Wait!"

Boogeyman turned around to see Velocity with his hands outstretched as if he was trying to physically pull her to him. "Please," he said, a slight begging tone edging its way into his voice. "If you do this you're going to get labeled a villain. _Please_ , just come with me and we can work something out. It doesn't have to be like this."

The last part revealed itself for the plea that it was. It tugged on the thread strings of his deepest fears. It wasn't the hero Velocity speaking to her, it was the man underneath the mask. A man who didn't want to see her go through with this, a man that had seen the worst the world had to offer and was shaped by violence beyond reasoning. She could feel his terror at the thought of that happening here in Brockton Bay, or someone of her personality ripping though the city with crusade like zeal as she crushed the life out of the gangs. Yet despite seeing the worst the world had to offer there were still seeds of compassion underneath all his pain, a true desire to want to help her and others.

Taylor Hebert might have appreciated the thought of a hero being so concerned about her but she wasn't Taylor Hebert anymore. Taylor Hebert wouldn't have killed two people in cold blood and ordered the maiming of dozens of others. Taylor Hebert would have just ducked her head down in the face in adversity and let it roll over her while she tried to wait it out. She would have let the world trample all over her without a single complaint.

She couldn't go back to that. Not now, not ever again.

As Phobia drew closer to the shadow of the nearest building Boogeyman stared at the Protectorate hero. She could see Velocity shift a little underneath her unrelenting yellow-eyed gaze. The tension was so thick she could have cut it with a knife and seemed to weigh on them like a physical thing. The only sound was the wind as it gently breezed through the street and the clicking of her steed's hooves on the cracked concrete.

After what seemed like an eternity Boogeyman gave Velocity his answer as her form slipped into the darkened shadows of the rusting corpse of the warehouse.

"Yes, Velocity. It _does_."

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	7. Foreboding 1-c

**Enjoy!**

Foreboding 1.c

The overweight and somewhat sickly looking Brockton Bay Director of the Parahuman Response Team almost seemed to loom over him despite that even with her standing up and him sitting down he was still taller than she was.

"Would you care to explain why you allowed a new parahuman who admitted to being responsible for Mush's hospitalization and the deaths of Skidmark, Squealer and three other Merchants to walk away without making any attempt to subdue her?" she asked, her voice deceptively soft and quiet, completely at odds with the low anger simmering off her form. Her desk groaned in protest as she leaned forward and allowed her weight to settle on it.

Robin Swoyer didn't like Emily Piggot.

Well, maybe that wasn't quite true, he didn't _dislike_ her at any rate.

She was an extremely combative person to her subordinates and her enemies. She would use a stick when she needed more carrot, she would push when she should back down, she would argue when she should compromise. She didn't possess the subtle touch that most directors had and it showed in her work.

There was a reason why there were so few rogues in the city.

But perhaps it was because despite her combative personality he understood her and what she had to deal with each day. She had to try and keep the stranglehold of the gangs from squeezing the city too tight while at the same time avoiding pushing them back too hard lest the city descended into chaos. He had been in her position once a long time ago, back when he had been in the military.

It had been a time before the militaries' funding had been completely consumed by the PRT and Protectorate's ever growing budget and back when the United Sates was still trying to keep the world from falling apart, before Endbringer attacks and growing internal threats had forced them to back off and focus on protecting themselves.

He had been in the Middle East, Iran specifically, about a year after Behemoth's first appearance. With New York still recovering from its own Endbringer attack, the higher ups had been concerned that the collapse of the Iranian economy would be felt far harder than they had originally anticipated. Even with the Marun Field irreversibly irradiated Iran still had control of over ten percent of the world's oil. If the country descended into total civil war like it appeared it was going to then the shockwaves would be felt across the globe. Robin had been part of a multinational task force that had been assembled to try and quell the fighting.

It…it hadn't been easy.

Sometimes Robin thought that the citizens of Brockton Bay didn't realize how easy they had it. Oh, sure they had villains and gangs rooted throughout the city like malignant cancers but it was nowhere near the completely terrifying chaos of Iran. The gangs followed a certain order and understood that escalation would only lead to their destruction. Lung might burn the odd building or two down and slag a few streets but it was rare that he indiscriminately slaughtered anyone during his thankfully uncommon rampages. While he and other villains certainly wouldn't hold back against PRT troopers they understood that killing civilians in large quantities would bring more scrutiny and attention to them than they would want.

Back there out in the thick of it there were no rules. There hadn't been any gentlemen's agreements or understandings between the task force or the hundreds of small terrorist and rebel groups that had sprung up in the wake of Behemoth's attack. It hadn't mattered to him at the time what their motivations were, religious, political, economic- all he knew is that they had been hell to fight.

You didn't need to be a parahuman to be dangerous.

Child soldiers. Suicide bombers. The wholesale slaughter of entire villages in the dead of night, leaving nothing behind but cold corpses for them to find in the faint light of the morning sun.

He had made a lot of choices that he had regretted, the kind of choices that kept him up at night.

Robin didn't hold any illusions of what would have happened if he hadn't triggered. He would have killed himself, either by putting a bullet in his own skull or letting an enemy gun him down with impunity. As it was his trigger event had given him the freedom to do exactly what he had always wanted to do, save people.

He didn't have to worry about whether the civilians walking down the street were planning on killing him in broad daylight anymore as he made his way to the grocery store. He didn't have to check a room for booby traps before entering it or make sure that what he was eating hadn't been poisoned. All he had to do was arrest the criminals and villains and keep the city from falling into anarchy.

So, he could understand and respect Piggot's position. She was forced to make decisions that could very well affect the wellbeing of hundreds if not thousands. She couldn't afford to be soft and friendly in a city like Brockton Bay.

That didn't mean he had to like her though.

"I felt that attempting to engage an unknown parahuman while so many were present would lead to further casualties and as such I chose to attempt to de-escalate instead," Velocity said, uncowed by his superior's apparent anger. There was nothing that she could do to him, he followed standard procedure for dealing with a new parahuman, and it wasn't like she was going to ream him for not chasing after a cape that for all he knew could kill him with a touch.

Piggot narrowed her eyes, but appeared to accept his reasoning and allowed herself to fall back into her seat and folded her hands as a contemplative look crossed her face. She remained silent for a moment, just staring at him with her cold calculating eyes before opening her mouth to ask a question.

"What do you think of the parahuman?" she asked.

Velocity knew that he had thoroughly described her in his report which was lying mere inches away from her on her rather large desk but he obliged anyway. Sometimes just talking about a subject would be enough to rattle loose some new ideas about it or reveal a detail missed before.

"She was…combative," Velocity said. "She seemed to have a rather low opinion of the Protectorate and PRT in general."

"Do you have any ideas on why she seems to hold us in such a low regard?" Piggot asked as she typed a note on her computer.

"She mentioned our inability to curb any of the gang's activities," Velocity said. He most assuredly did not flinch at the look that Piggot gave him. It was common knowledge that for whatever reason the director was not particularly fond of parahumans and the idea that less savory individuals could walk the streets with impunity didn't sit well with her.

It didn't sit well with him either, but there was very little that they were capable of accomplishing to halt the gang's progress that wasn't illegal or involve a very high body count.

"Do you think we could leverage her to join?" Piggot asked as she folded her hands.

Velocity shook his head. "I doubt it, we would either need to catch her, which we've already determined would be extremely difficult, or we would have to find her identity which would be a violation of the unwritten rules," he said, ignoring the dark look that Piggot gave at the mention of the parahuman communities' gentlemen rules, "And even if we did once this hits the PHO boards she is going to get a lot of support from the public."

He left unsaid the PR backlash that they would have to deal with if they tried to press gang Boogeyman into the wards after dismantling an almost universally reviled gang. There would hardly be any tears for the passing of Skidmark and Squealer and even considering the brutality she demonstrated towards the Merchants Velocity doubted there would be too many civilians who would want her to stop.

"The only other option is that if we somehow convinced her to join willingly, but given her strongly negative reaction to such a proposal I doubt anything would come of it. If anything, she might be insulted by the offer," Velocity said as he shifted in his rather uncomfortable seat. He was half convinced that Piggot had a more comfortable, near exact, duplicate of this seat for debriefings because it never seemed this uncomfortable when doing anything else.

"So you're saying we won't be able to bring her in?" Piggot asked with a raised eyebrow.

Velocity nodded, "At least without understanding the root of her issue with us and attempting to fix or convince her it wasn't our responsibility I doubt she would be willing to accept a deal."

Because you didn't get that type of anger from standard stuff. He could understand if she was angry at the Protectorate and remained apathetic to their envoys, but for that kind of near-violent reaction to simply suggesting she came into the Rig to work something out hinted at a much more personal issue with the Protectorate.

"Is she a hero or a villain?"

Velocity paused as he thought about the question. It was an important question, one that could shape a parahuman's future for the better or worse for years to come. He had heard horror stories of heroic capes who because of misunderstandings, had been labeled villains and nearly had their lives ruined. It wasn't anything that the PRT would admit publicly because of PR bullshit, but Velocity more than understood the importance of this question.

"If she was a villain she would have attempted to subvert the Merchant's leadership and take over the gang instead of handing them over to us." There was a short pause as Velocity considered his next words, "I think we might have another Shadow Stalker on our hands."

Piggot leaned back in her seat contemplatively. Shadow Stalker was a problem child if ever there was one, no doubt about that. She refused to socialize whatsoever with her Ward teammates and was prone to leaving her partners behind to go on unauthorized solo patrols. Totally against regulations but Piggot held back on punishing her because despite all her faults she was good at what she did. She easily had one of the highest takedown rates of the Wards and had saved more than one innocent civilian from death or worse.

Of course, that was what made so frustrating prior to her forceful inductions into the wards. She was _too_ good.

During her time as an independent, she had near caused a minor turf war. Shadow Stalker's brutal takedown of a rather well connected Empire lieutenant had sparked a surge in Empire crimes along their border with the ABB, which of course led to the ABB mobilizing their forces in retaliation.

If the Protectorate hadn't brought her in and deescalated the situation a lot of people could have died.

"That is concerning," Piggot said as her fingers drummed against her desk. "Even more so given that she seems to have no compunctions against murder."

Velocity had to keep himself from shifting in his seat. The thought of a child willingly killing someone without hesitation or regard for another's life brought back some memories that he would have preferred to ignore.

Piggot continued, apparently unaware of his growing discomfort. "And given the level of power she had so far displayed attempting to bring her in would be difficult, and that's assuming that she revealed all of her powers to you." A short snort revealed Piggot's opinion on that idea.

Frankly, Velocity had to agree with her. There was absolutely no indication that "Boogeyman" as she apparently referred to herself had revealed all of her powers. But what she had revealed was concerning enough.

A powerful master ability that manifested as rather nightmarish looking horses that numbered in the dozens if not more. Depending on their shelf life and general capabilities she was already looking at a Master 6 or 7, and that was assuming she couldn't make anymore.

Mover 4 given her disappearing trick. Velocity had spent a few minutes a high speed looking through the shadows where she and her steed had vanished and had found nothing. A quick run around the area hadn't revealed any sign of her either so she had an effective minimum range of thirty feet and it was probably much larger.

Her Mover and Master rating alone would make her a nightmare to fight and the interviews that the detained Merchants were going through were apparently revealing, even more, abilities that she had used during her assault on their base. He wasn't privy to those reports yet, but if she was as strong as he thought she was then there was very little the Protectorate or PRT would be able to do in detaining her.

"May I ask what we're going to do?" Velocity asked.

Piggot frowned at the question, perhaps she was thinking of the same nightmare scenario he was. "I'll be meeting with Armsmaster and Miss Militia in about half an hour to go over the interviews. If we're lucky we'll find something that we can use." The unspoken statement that they were never that lucky wasn't brought up. "Either way we will need to start making contingency plans if she continues to escalate, but that's not my main concern right now."

"The gangs," Velocity said, throat dry from the thought of the other gang's reaction to the Merchant's apparent destruction.

While the Merchants were nowhere near the Empire or ABB in terms of raw power they did act as a stabilizer for the city, as destitute and depraved as they were. While they were too weak to be bothered with they were too strong to outright ignore. Neither gang could risk engaging with each other _and_ the Protectorate whilst the Merchants circled like a pack of vultures, looking for the slightest signs of weakness in their competitors.

It was why they had decided to try and keep Mush's hospitalization a secret. If the gangs learned that the Merchants had lost their main muscle, then they might get some ideas that the Protectorate would rather they didn't. Now that the Merchants as an organization were apparently going to be defunct there wasn't going to be anything keeping the Empire and ABB from expanding, and that didn't consider the dozens of other minor gangs that were going to pop up in the next few weeks looking for a piece of the carcass that was Brockton Bay.

The city was likely to face a full-fledged gang war in the next few days if they weren't careful.

"Indeed," Piggot said, her face twisted in displeasure. "I don't need to spell out the consequences of this, do I?"

Velocity shook his head wearily, his mind flashing to dead bodies piling the streets, "No."

If Lung decided to make a move there would be very little the Protectorate could do to stop him. The last time the entirety of the local Protectorate team and New Wave had fought against the Asian parahuman they had been thoroughly trounced, only Lung's prerogative to avoid killing any of them prevented a bloodbath. He could still remember the screams of panic and terror as the titanic cape smashed through them like a wrecking ball. He had heard that Armsmaster was working on something that would be able to keep Lung from escalating, but it was far from finished and even if it was there were still other threats to the safety of the city.

If Lung decided to make a move, then it was almost guaranteed that Kaiser would retaliate in kind. While the Empire didn't possess the sheer power of Lung they had more than a few capes capable of taking on most of the local Protectorate by themselves, and that wasn't even considering the backup that they could call in.

The fact of the matter was that they were outnumbered by the gangs. Even including the wards, they didn't even have enough to match the Empire, and the wards weren't even supposed to be fighting people like Hookwolf or Night.

Velocity would have run his hands through his plain brown hair in frustration if it wasn't for his helmet. As it was he was forced to settle for templing his fingers around the edge of his nose as his mind played through all of the worst-case scenarios that could develop within the next week or so.

"Velocity," Piggot's voice snapped. Velocity's head shot up to meet his director's gaze as he tried to regain control of his emotions.

The past week, in general, had been pretty bad for him. Not only was he going to have to deal with all this which was bringing up memories that he would rather leave unremembered but he had also been having some nightmares lately. The smuggling group that he had helped take down had been a human trafficking ring and a great number of the prisoners had been underage. Their hollowed thousand yard stares and their unhealthy, rail thin bodies that had been covered in various marks had affected him more than he would have liked to admit.

Piggot held him under her gaze like a bug for a moment before sighing.

"…Get some rest Robin, you've been working overtime for the past week," Piggot said not unkindly.

"Yes-I-I'll get some rest," he said as he rose from his seat. He gave Piggot a distracted wave, his mind not entirely present as he walked through the steel armored door. Instead, his mind was focused on the young woman he had encountered last night.

 _The young woman stared at him with unnaturally yellow eyes that seemed to glow a little in the darkness. Her steed shifted underneath her with its powerful looking limbs clicking against the concrete. He had seen horse related injuries back in Iran and knew they were nothing to joke about, adding teeth that looked like they had been ripped out of a bear's mouth was going to give him a few nightmares._

 _The street was almost utterly silent and Velocity couldn't help but vibrate his legs a little to burn off some of his excess nervousness. He could see her contemplating his words beneath as her face became as expressionless as a brick wall._

 _"Yes, Velocity. It_ does _."_

 _The words held a certain air of finality to them, like announcing that a glacier was going to crush a village or an Endbringer was going to ravage a city. There was no debate, nor arguments, no pleas for her to reconsider. She was going to go through with this if it was the last thing she ever did._

 _He had seen people like that before, back in Iran. You couldn't reason them, you couldn't plead with them, all you could do was try to stop them and pray to Scion that you wouldn't take anyone else down with them._

 _As she faded into the shadows of the building Velocity couldn't help but feel empty, like he had just been delivered a crushing defeat. Even with the thirty odd Merchants waiting for imprisonment he knew that this victory was a hollow one._

* * *

Robin wasn't sure how he made it back to his on-base room. He had just sort of blanked out after he had left the meeting and when he "woke up" he was standing in the doorway to his room.

Maybe he was even more exhausted than he thought.

Robin flopped down on the bed, not even bothering to remove his costume. He could feel his muscles cry out in sweet relief as they finally got to take a break. Even for a speedster like himself constantly exerting himself for a couple of days didn't do a lot of favors for his body.

But as he laid on the rather Spartan bed staring at the stark white ceiling, just like every other ceiling on the Rig, he found that he couldn't go to sleep.

His body felt more than ready to give into the sweet embrace of unconsciousness but apparently, his mind had other ideas.

It was an issue that he had with his powers in general. It just wasn't his body that sped up but his mind as well, it was the only way he could run as fast as he could without faceplanting into a wall or running off a building. To him, it always appeared that the world had slowed down around him as if everything was set to negative times 100 speed. Useful in a fight and when trying to speed read a book, not so useful when trying to avoid thinking.

More than once he had accidentally activated his powers without realizing it and spent what felt like hours just trying to blank his mind and enjoy some peace and let a few hours pass only to find it had only been a few minutes at best. It was why he always made sure that he had a clock in view when he was spending time by himself to avoid any accidental power uses.

 _"I will not allow myself to be shackled to the ones who have allowed the city to fall so far."_

Robin understood what she was going through, he could understand the frustration of not being able to do anything, to watch as villain after villain walked out of containment like they had a revolving door built in. Watching good men and women be torn to shreds by Hookwolf as he launched himself out of his transport truck without a single scratch to show for it. Time and time again the criminal element slipped through their fingers like a bar of soap.

He understood how that resentment and frustration could boil under the skin and threaten to consume you, of the little dark thoughts that plagued him every time they caught a villain. _What if they fell down the stairs?_ That sweet seductive little whisper that could make everything better if you just gave in this one time.

It was something that he had to struggle with, especially with his military training and experience constantly demanding him to end the threat, and how easy it would be for him to do so with a well-placed knife or two…

" _No. Bad Robin,"_ he thought as she shook himself out of that line of thinking. A quick glance at the clock revealed that he hadn't accidentally used his power and was still subject to the normal flow of time. He sighed as he tried to get himself more comfortable. Boogeyman had brought up some issues that had been haunting him for some time now.

It was clear that Boogeyman had given into that seductive voice with gleeful abandon if her actions were anything to go by. Robin couldn't help but shiver at the memory of that clearly unnatural smile that she had given him.

He knew deep in his heart that she wasn't going to stop. He could understand why, but his comprehension of her motives did little to ease the churning of his stomach as he considered all the damage she could bring down on the city despite her intention to help.

But could he say she was _wrong?_ The last time any villains had been caught and transported to prison was back when Lung decided that Brockton Bay would be a good place to set up shop and ripped apart the other Asian gangs until they either bent or broke.

That had been years ago. Since then the entire city had been stuck in a holding pattern with nobody making any progress towards defeating their enemies. The gang were now fixtures of the city and viewed as something that had always been there and would continue to remain. Yet in one night Boogeyman had torn apart a gang that had survived in one form or another since the era of Marquis and the Marche.

Her attack had been effective, but it was a dangerous game she was playing. The other gangs would be forced to escalate and either she or the civilians around her would suffer. That wasn't even considering what would happen if some villain found out her identity. Her lack of a mask either meant that she had some sort of protection against identification or she simply didn't care about people knowing who she was. If it was the former, then she could very well wake up to find Lung standing over the burning corpses of her family.

But even as Robin stared at the stark white ceiling and considered how he was going to try and keep Boogeyman from escalating and getting herself and those around her killed he could feel his thoughts turning to mush and his eyelids were starting to droop as his mind finally caught up to his body and realized that yes, he was exhausted.

Planning could wait until he had gotten some rest. There was no point in panicking about a future he didn't know.

* * *

The threads of the future twisted and changed as dozens severed; a new element tore through them with the subtlety of a brick, ripping apart old futures and birthing new ones from the primordial soup of possibility.

High above the Earth, where the edge of the atmosphere met the void of space a single figure looked down upon the blue green marble that humanity called its home as if she was a goddess of old.

A single crystalline feathered wing twitched.

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	8. Shadow 2-1

**Enjoy!**

Shadow 2.1

Boogeyman stared at the wrought iron fence with no small amount of trepidation as a rolling ball of emotions churned in her gut. The half-rusted fence loomed over her and for the first time since she had realized the full potential of her abilities she felt powerless.

The sign above the fence looked like it was being held together with glue and spittle. More than a few of the letters were missing, leaving nothing behind but a faint absence of dust and grime that was slowly being consumed by the filth that floated through the air.

Brockton Bay Cemetery.

Had her heart still been beating it would have exploded out of her chest as she pressed against the gate which flung open with an ear ringing creak as rusted joints squealed under the strain. She quickly glanced around to make sure nobody had heard the noise, but there wasn't anyone in sight. That wasn't surprising though, few people came to this place anymore even to maintain it. She used to joke with Emma how she was sure that the caretakers were really bio-tinker creations as it was the only explanation they had for how they had kept their jobs for this long given the state of the cemetery.

The dead grass crunched beneath her feet as she stepped through the threshold that separated the cemetery and the street. Boogeyman drew her shoulders back and let out a breath. She couldn't turn back now or she would never gather the resolve to do this again.

A chill hung in the air as she passed rows and rows of cracked gravestones, many unmarked. It was a sad fact of life in Brockton Bay that people died, but to see the collective efforts of the gangs laid out like this with countless rows of unmarked or bodiless graves was disheartening. Boogeyman clenched her fist in anger as she weaved her way through the labyrinth of graves.

Her footsteps came to a stop as she approached a particular pair of gravestones. She could feel her chest tighten as the names plastered on the stone in a lifeless scrawl stared back at her.

Annette Rose Hebert

1969-2007

"She taught something precious to each of us."

Daniel Alex Hebert

1968-2011

"Gone, but never forgotten."

"Hey Mom," Taylor said, her voice cracking a little, "I-I know it's been awhile since I visited." Her stomach churned in guilt, she had only ever visited her mom's grave once after the funeral, the pain of staring at the headstone and knowing that only a few feet down was the body of her mom had been too much.

It still was, but she needed to do this, she needed to be strong.

"I got powers, and-and I'm going to stop the gangs. I'm going to make sure they won't hurt anyone ever again," she said. The gravestone remained immobile and as lifeless as ever but Taylor felt better. More words poured out of her mouth as she continued her one-sided conversation.

"I'm going to have to do some stuff that I'm probably going to regret, but…" she pursed her lips, "You, you once said that to achieve our goals we need to be willing to make sacrifices, we need to be willing to struggle and fight for what we believe in, no matter what. I-I'm not going to be a good person Mom. I can't, not if I want to make this city a better place."

She swallowed, her throat scratchy and dry as her breath caught. "I-I hope that you'll be able to forgive me one day." She placed her hand against the headstone. The stone was cold and lifeless, even more so than her own hand. Taylor shuddered as she turned to her father's headstone.

"Dad, I know we didn't talk a lot after the accident but…" Taylor trailed off as she took a deep shaky breath, "I never blamed you for any of it. I should have told you about the bullying and everything that was happening but I didn't want to hurt you."

She had considered going to her dad about the bullying once she realized it wasn't going to stop, but she knew that if she had told her dad that she had been friendless for so long without him even noticing he would have never forgiven himself. He had already been so hurt and broken after mom's death, she couldn't put more on his plate because of some discomfort.

"I didn't do anything and you paid the price," she said as tears started to form in the corners of her eyes.

She had avoided her father the first few weeks she had been all but invisible and intangible to the world around her. It had hurt to stay away from her dad for so long, but the thought of him looking at her and not seeing her would have broken her. So, she kept her distance as she prepared to let herself fade away into nothingness when the accident happened.

After two and a half weeks of no sign of her from the police, which in Brockton Bay either meant they were dead or not coming back, he went out for a ride after some heavy drinking.

He didn't come back.

And as much as she told herself that it was the trio's fault for putting her in this situation she knew deep down that her dad was dead because of her because she didn't do anything, because she was too much of a coward to think about how her disappearance would affect him. She had known that he had been depressed since mom's death, she should have realized that this would happen.

But she didn't and now he was dead.

"I'm not going to let that happen again," she said as tears streaked her cheeks, the salty liquid glistening in the faint moonlight. She was never going to let anything like this happen again because she decided to do nothing. Enough people suffered because she had chosen to do nothing.

"But… if I'm going to do this then I can't be Taylor Hebert anymore," Taylor said, her voice strained. "I can't be your daughter anymore."

Taylor Hebert was the coward who condemned her own father to death. Boogeyman wasn't. Taylor Hebert was the weakling that let the world stomp on her. Boogeyman was going to be the monster that gangs feared. She couldn't be a coward because cowards weren't scary. They were pitiful creatures that got scared, consumed by their own fears.

She couldn't be that.

"I'm sorry," she said as she wiped tears from her face. There was nothing more that she could say that could possibly make this better. Just standing here was making her chest hurt from the pain and anguish of seeing evidence that everyone that had once loved her was dead or a monster.

With her throat constricting Taylor turned around. The dead leafless trees seemed to close in on her as she walked away from the only family she had ever known and towards the decaying city that wanted nothing more than to strangle what little life she had out into a grinder of misery and suffering.

As she neared the threshold that separated the two worlds she turned back towards the cemetery. She couldn't see their gravestones anymore, but just for one instant, she allowed herself to be Taylor Hebert once last time.

"I love you."

The words barely came out a whisper, so quiet even she was scarcely able to hear them. But for just that single moment the chill that hung over the monument to death seemed to warm up a little, and the sliver of moonlight that clung to the starry night sky seemed to grow a little brighter.

And with that Taylor Hebert joined her parents in the land of the dead.

Boogeyman turned and crossed over the threshold. The brief trace of warmth was gone, replaced by the coldness of Brockton Bay and the slight brightness of the moon was snuffed out by a pack of passing clouds.

The very street seemed to darken beneath her feet as she approached her waiting steed. Phobia glanced at her curiously, no doubt smelling the rolling ball of emotions that she had given into just a few minutes ago.

"It's time to go," Boogeyman said as she mounted the Nightmare. Taylor Hebert was dead but she wasn't going to die alone. Those that did this to her, to her father, they would suffer. She would tear down their little world and leave them groveling in the dirt like the pathetic spineless cowardly worms that they were. She would show the world that she wasn't going to stand for any villain, even if they were on the side of the law.

Boogeyman felt a wide smile spread across her face at the thought of all she was going to do to ruin their self-centered lives.

It was time for Sophia's reckoning.

* * *

Boogeyman stared out at the dilapidated city while she stood on the rooftop as she waited for her target to arrive.

The last few days had been busy ones for her. After she had killed Skidmark and Squealer she went to town on the remaining Merchant safe houses and production centers that she could locate. Without any parahumans to stop her it had been almost comically easy to subdue the various Merchants that had crawled back into their hiding holes. She had destroyed most of the various drugs, weapons, and money she had found, but she kept a small portion of the drugs for herself.

She had a very _special_ plan for those.

At any rate, it was unlikely that any of the remaining Merchants who had scattered once they heard of their bosses' deaths would be in any position to rebirth the gang or create a new one from the ashes. They had no supplies, safe houses or any parahuman protection. She would give them all about a week or so before they were found dead in the streets.

But while she had been busy the rest of the city hadn't been idle either. In response to the destruction of the Merchants, the Empire and ABB were starting to stir. Kaiser was rattling his saber about "protection of the white workers" and other such nonsense but he hadn't made any moves yet. There had been far more Empire foot soldiers patrolling their former border with the now defunct Merchants but they had yet to do anything overt.

It didn't take a genius to figure out what Kaiser's game plan was. His whole propaganda spiel about being a protector and savior wouldn't hold up very well if he made an obvious territory grab so soon. Most of the territory that the Merchants held had been filled with more minorities, there was nothing there for Kaiser to claim to be protecting other than his own greed-driven interests. Instead, it appeared that he was choosing to surrender the first move to Lung in order to validate his propaganda that the "chinks" were coming to take everything away from the "white man" to sate their own desires.

As it was Lung appeared to be content to take his time in responding to the death of the Merchants. Oni Lee had been spotted on the edges of the Merchant's old territory a couple of times, but he did nothing. Lung himself hadn't made any appearances yet but it was unlikely that he was going to let an opportunity like this to slip through his fingers. Boogeyman wasn't sure what Lung was waiting for, but she had heard rumors from the Merchants that she caught who were all too happy to talk to her after a little persuasion, that Lung had gotten a new cape to bolster his forces.

It left the city in a very tense standstill, with neither side willing to make the first move. The situation left the Protectorate with their hands tied as well, they couldn't commit to taking down one gang without the other one moving in to pick up the pieces. Oh sure, they had a few more token patrols in the Merchant's former territory than they usually would, but they still weren't doing anything. Instead of trying to help improve the city, they remained focused on maintaining the status quo so that their jobs would be that much easier.

A Nightmare brushed against her shoulder, breaking her out from her musings on the current condition of the gangs.

"Wait," she commanded, patting the Nightmare on its snout. She had spent too much time in this small area the last few days trying to draw the attention of her target to have it wasted because one Nightmare decided that it was too impatient to wait to feed. The creature snorted in compliance and fell back in line with the rest of the herd hiding in the shadows.

Her herd's total numbers had skyrocketed after her tangle with the Merchants. She didn't have an exact count but she estimated that they were close to around two to three hundred strong. A massive boost from the one hundred she had used to tear apart the Merchants. The fact that she was apparently powerful enough that she didn't have to physically interact with every single one of her targets had helped her grow her herd at a much faster rate. And given that her range of about two blocks seemed to be growing, it probably wouldn't be long before she could create Nightmares from halfway across the city.

Her own personal power was growing as well. A few videos that had gotten a clear shot of her speech to the Merchants had exploded on the PHO forums. People all over the Eastern seaboard and beyond knew who she was- the newbie cape who took down a whole gang in one night. She felt more powerful than she ever had before and her strength was only going to continue to grow.

But despite this tremendous growth in her strength she had yet to make her move either. She didn't want to risk giving away her newfound power quite just yet. She had a portion of her Nightmares stalking the Merchant's territory, going after anyone they caught committing a crime and filling them with the fear of god, or in this case the fear of _her_. In response, crime had dropped by an astounding rate in what was usually one of the more violent parts of the city, but it still wasn't enough. She wouldn't stop until every single gang had been shattered and the Protectorate either did their jobs or got out of her city.

Boogeyman stood up straighter as her eyes caught sight of her prey.

To anyone else the dark colors of Shadow Stalker's outfit would have been near indistinguishable from its surroundings in the darkness, but she didn't have such a problem. To her, the darkest of nights might as well have been the brightest of days.

Her gunmetal grey crossbow glinted in what little light remained and revealed the tip of the loaded broad head bolt that was certainly against whatever regulations the Wards had.

 _"But when has that ever stopped her,"_ Boogeyman growled to herself as Shadow Stalker drew closer and closer to her position. The cape in question appeared to be totally unaware of her presence, gliding from rooftop to rooftop in her shadow state with what appeared to be an almost leisurely pace. Boogeyman could feel the caution wafting off her as her head twisted on occasion to scan her surroundings, but it was enveloped by a self-assuredness of her own strength. As if she thought that she could handle whatever came her way.

Boogeyman smiled. She'd take that from her first.

She would be lying to herself if her primary motivator for doing this wasn't revenge. She didn't deny that the thought of seeing Sophia rocking in a fetal position as she shivered in fear wasn't appealing to her imagination, but she wasn't going to make Sophia suffer simply for the sake of suffering. Her pain and torment would serve a greater purpose.

Shadow Stalker landed on the same roof she was occupying with a quiet thud as she retook corporeal form. Boogeyman could feel the Ward tense a little under her invisible gaze as if she knew that someone was out there but she couldn't tell were.

"Hello Shadow Stalker," Boogeyman said, altering her voice slightly so that Sophia wouldn't instantly recognize her. She watched with no small amount of amusement as the Ward jumped nearly a foot in the air at the sound of her voice.

"Who's there? Show yourself," Shadow Stalker growled dangerously as she held her crossbow up in a firing position while she scanned the rooftop for threats.

"Don't you know who I am?" Boogeyman asked as she slowly moved across the shadows that covered the building.

"…You're Boogeyman," Shadow Stalker said. Boogeyman watched as the tension on Sophia's frame died down a little as her finger removed itself from the trigger. She could feel the surprise and fear that had just clouded Sophia's mind fade away to allow her curiosity to take its place.

"I am." There was no reason for her to deny the statement, and apparently, Sophia didn't appear to have any reason to fear her, instead, she seemed to almost _enjoy_ the idea of meeting with her. There was still some caution, but that appeared to be more for the general area that they were in than anything that had to specifically do with her.

She would correct her of this mistake soon enough.

"May I ask what a Ward is doing so far in my territory? I would have thought the Protectorate would have you in the safer parts of the city, for whatever the term safer means nowadays?" Boogeyman asked.

Sophia shrugged, "Bored. Wanted to hunt some gang members."

Well, she couldn't fault Shadow Stalker for doing what was almost the exact same thing she was doing, could she?

"I didn't realize the Protectorate allowed their Wards to take such an active role in fighting the gangs?" Boogeyman asked as she drew herself closer to Shadow Stalker, careful not to give away her exact location. She didn't want to spook the girl and have her run off before she was ready.

Boogeyman knew of course that the Protectorate wasn't supposed to let the Wards engage in combat. Their whole pitch was centered around the idea of being able to keep young parahumans safe and out of crime by teaching them to use their powers for the benefit of society. But it was all too easy to see in a city as broken as Brockton Bay that their superiors had let them cut corners and loosen a few regulations to make things easier on themselves.

Like allowing a sadist like Sophia to have free reign of a school because she was "useful".

She was going to show them the error of their ways.

Shadow Stalker snorted in contempt, "Please, like those idiots would ever let one of their precious _Wards_ actually do anything productive. They all think I went back home."

 _"Really?"_ Boogeyman had to wonder. Did Sophia really think that she wasn't in any danger here? She supposed she could have given that impression since she hadn't gotten violent with any of few Protectorate heroes she had encountered throughout the week. But still, to announce to a potentially hostile cape that your superiors and teammates didn't know where you were?

 _"Idiot."_

"And I take it you're more…productive?" Boogeyman asked with a slight twinge of anger

Shadow Stalker's chest puffed up a little bit in pride, apparently missing the anger that had edged into the conversation. "Damn straight. I get more done in one week than any of those weaklings do in a month. They don't get it, not like you or I do. People like the Merchants, they only understand pain," Shadow Stalker said, a hint of anger and frustration weaved its way into her voice.

"Yes, you would know about making people suffer wouldn't you _Sophia,_ " Boogeyman hissed. She understood what Sophia was saying, she really did, especially since that's what she had been doing for the last week and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future, but it didn't make her feel any less enraged at Sophia for her actions at Winslow.

Sophia reeled as if she had been physically struck. Boogeyman could feel the caution and panic rolling off her as she drew her crossbow back up into a firing position, carefully scanning the rooftop for any sign of her.

"How the hell to you know my name?" Sophia asked, apparently not realizing that if she hadn't known who was beneath the mask her question would have all but confirmed it for her.

"What? Don't you recognize me?" Boogeyman asked as she emerged from the shadows. They washed off her like water as she stepped forward. She could feel Sophia's heart rate increase and her eyes widen in surprise at her sudden appearance. She kept her face carefully blank as she stared at the Ward but the small eddies of black sand that formed and vanished around her body revealed her true anger. Her eyes seemed to almost glow in rage as her dark hair swirled around in a nonexistent breeze while wisps of shadows rolled of her clothing like fumes.

This was the girl that was responsible for ruining her life.

Now she was going to ruin hers.

"I thought we got to know each other pretty well after you tortured me for two years," she said as she continued her slow and steady approach towards Sophia, who in turn was being forced to keep backing up at the sight of the towering cape. She had always been taller than Sophia, or most of her classmates for that matter, but she had always felt so small in comparison to Sophia. Now the shoe was going to be on the other foot.

"…Hebert," Sophia said, the name dripping with disbelief as if she couldn't comprehend what she had turned Taylor into. "Is that you?"

Boogeyman snarled, revealing her sharp fangs. "Yes Sophia, it's me. You know, the girl you left to rot and die in that _thing_ you called a prank. The girl that you spent the last two years of your life doing your best to make her miserable for no other reason that your own perverse pleasure. Yes, I was that girl."

She could feel Sophia tense up, her concern starting to reach a fervor pitch as the back of her feet hit the edge of the roof they were standing on, leaving her with nowhere to go but down. "Listen…Hebert-it, it was just a prank-"

"Just a prank," she whispered, almost completely inaudible, and yet it was enough to silence Sophia's half-formed protest. "Was it just a prank to leave me in there and let who knows how many diseases make their way into my bloodstream as I carved my hands into bloody ribbons while trying to break down the door? Was it just a prank when my limbs started to lose blood flow after being packed into a tight space for so long and left me unable to do anything but lie there waiting for assistance that never came? Was it just a prank when I laid there _dying_ , unable to call for help because I had lost my voice from screaming for help an hour earlier? So, tell me Sophia, _do you think that was just a prank!?"_

Boogeyman could see Sophia swallow nervously, even through the thick fabric that covered her neck. It appeared that from the concern that was rolling around her empty skull that the Wards had been shown the aftermath of some of her visits and was clearly thinking the same thing would happen to her.

"You can't do this Hebert, if you do the Protectorate will come after you," Sophia hissed in what was obviously a desperate attempt to lessen her wrath. Boogeyman only laughed at her attempt to dissuade her from her goal and the utter hypocrisy of her words.

"I suppose it's only fitting that when confronted with a real challenge you crawl back to your masters like the cowardly weakling you are," she taunted with a wide grin. She could feel a sharp sting of anger at the insinuation that she might be weak.

"I'm not weak," Sophia snarled back, her anger apparently overriding her good sense. She adjusted the aim of her crossbow by a fraction and fired. The broad head bolt cleaved its way through the air as potential energy became kinetic energy. But even as the bolt approached her face Boogeyman made no motion to avoid the attack.

Within a fraction of a second, the bolt was mere inches from her face when a black blur erupted from a nearby shadow and knocked the bolt off course. Boogeyman could feel Sophia's surprise as the Nightmare retook its physical form, crossbow bolt held within its maw. The horse squeezed on the piece of steel and shattered it in two. Boogeyman could see Sophia lining up another shot, but she didn't give her a chance to attack this time.

Instead, she summoned her nightmare sand and form a whip which she lashed out at the Ward. Sophia yelped reflectively as the black whip wrapped itself around her crossbow like a snake coiling its prey.

Boogeyman pulled and the crossbow shot out of Sophia's hands like a bar of soap, her mundane strength unable to compare to Boogeyman's newfound supernatural strength. As the crossbow soared in the air she gave a mental command to another one of her Nightmares who jumped out of the shadows and clenched the crossbow between its teeth just like its brethren had with the arrow. The crossbow held for a moment longer before shattering into pieces under the pressure that the Nightmare's jaw exerted.

"Yes, I can see how you're not weak," Boogeyman said with a mocking edge as her yellow eyes glared down at the fidgeting Ward. Apparently having her weapon disabled had knocked her anger back a peg or two given the newfound nervousness that she was feeling.

She could still feel the anger that wafted off the girl at the comment about her being weak, but it was largely overshadowed by the overwhelming fear she was feeling as the seriousness of her situation became apparent to her.

Her form lost his corporeal nature and became a swirling black cloud that was immune or at the very least highly resistant to most physical impediments, including gravity. She seemed to almost start to float down to the roof of the much lower building below to them in an attempt to escape Boogeyman's wrath. It appeared that even though Sophia was an impulsive sadist she wasn't entirely lacking a brain if she recognized when to run from a fight.

Boogeyman had read on one of the PHO theorist forums that Shadow Stalker couldn't phase through a sufficiently powerful electrical current, but it had never been proven. But that theory didn't concern her as a sand whip lashed out again with blinding speed. Her weapon tore the cloud of black matter that made-up Shadow Stalker's existence in two.

The cloud almost seemed to convulse in pain as it lost its steady pace and virtually dropped like a rock as Sophia Hess retook her physical form, gasping for air. Boogeyman leaned over the edge of the roof as she looked down to the wheezing Ward below who looked like she had just had a heart attack.

"What," Sophia started as she gasped for breath like a fish out of water, "what was that?"

Boogeyman smiled. It wasn't a nice smile; it was the one she reserved for her mind games as she tore their very being apart block by block until nothing remained but a shivering empty shell. She could feel Sophia shudder in a seamless mixture of fear and pain at her slasher smile.

She could see the glint of realization in Sophia's eyes as the full force of the situation she was in hit her. She was alone in one of the shadiest parts of the city without a weapon. Nobody knew that she had come here. Her power had been effectively neutered. And on top of that, she now had a person who she had spent the last two years of her life tormenting for fun and games towering over her like something out of a nightmare and was more than capable of ripping her apart into tiny pieces.

"Your reckoning," Boogeyman said. She watched in delight as Sophia tried to make herself look like she wasn't about to crap her pants, but she could feel the rolling ball of fear that was starting to consume her. "Eight."

"What,\?" Sophia asked as she pulled herself up to her knees in a clearly painful fashion, obviously confused by the sudden change in topic.

"That's how many hours you have to last against us."

"Us?" Sophia asked, her voice small, clearly dreading the answer.

Boogeyman smiled and spread her arms out as if she was going to jump down and give the girl a bone crushing hug. With a mental command, the rest of the Nightmares that she had brought emerged from their hiding places. Some burst forth from the many shadows that surrounded them while others formed up from the cracks that dotted the building's root. Within seconds about three dozen Nightmares joined them on the roof. They didn't completely surround Sophia, instead keeping a single large opening for her to use, but that didn't make them appear any less terrifying.

Sharp teeth and burning yellow eyes glared at Sophia whose own eyes darted around nervously as the herd started to draw in closer, squeezing and hemming her in.

"You can't do this," Sophia said, a desperate edge entering her voice as she tried against to dissuade her from her course of action. "If you hurt a Ward the Protectorate will take the kiddie gloves off. They'll go after your civilian identity and-"

Boogeyman cut her off, "They'll do what? Go after my family? My mother is dead, as you and Emma constantly took pleasure in reminding me. My father is dead because of your actions. I have no friends because you wouldn't let me. I have no life outside of what I am doing right now because you decided that I wasn't allowed to live. So, tell me, Sophia, what do I have left to _lose?_ "

Sophia said nothing, muscles tense and twitching as she was herded towards the edge of the roof once again by the Nightmares.

"You have until sunrise," Boogeyman said, cutting through the tense silence.

"…to do what?" her ex-tormenter asked with as much fear and trepidation as one would expect when faced with a mass of murder horses.

"To do the one thing you've always claimed you were best at," Boogeyman said with a smirk as a sand spear with jagged hooks formed in her hand. Her back arched and her wrist twisted as she prepared to throw the weapon.

"Survive."

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	9. Shadow 2-2

**Enjoy!**

Shadow 2.2

8:00

Sophia Hess didn't like being afraid. Fear indicated weakness. It paralyzed the body and mind in the face of danger. It was a plague that she had dealt with a lot while that _man_ had been living in her house. She had been terrified the night she triggered, but her powers gave her a way out. A way to stop being the terrified Sophia Hess and to become the hero, Shadow Stalker. Instead of her being afraid, people were afraid of her. It was a nice feeling, to see them squirm under your gaze and realize that they had no power over what was going to happen to them as they begged and pleaded for mercy like the weak cowards they were.

The other Wards just didn't get it. They didn't have to live their whole lives being black in a city partially controlled by Neo-Nazis. They didn't have to spend the nights with a knife under their pillows in case someone decided they wanted your house. She could understand that their lives might have been miserable (people who triggered typically weren't paragons of mental stability) but they just didn't get what it was like for the people who couldn't afford to live in the nice part of town.

Dean liked to play himself as the white knight, the dashing hero of the story. He didn't get what the world was really like, he was the son of the third richest man in the city and basically got whatever he wanted on a silver platter. She tuned out his moralizing speeches to her about "how she should be a better person" and all that because he was an idiot. He certainly never had to worry about whether there would be food on the table for dinner.

She did reluctantly admit to herself that Dennis understood. Out of all the Wards, he was the one whose lifestyle before triggering was the closest to hers. He understood that out in this jungle of a city you sometimes couldn't afford to be nice or the dashing hero, but he always played himself off as the bumbling fool and the jokester, as if he could somehow hide the ugly truth of the word behind bad jokes.

Emma, she understood. She knew that out in the real-world people didn't get to be nice. The strong crushed the weak because they were strong because they had power. She knew what it was like to be weak once and she never wanted to be that again. Being strong meant you couldn't play being a hero, it meant you had to make the hard choices in life. Choices that could determine life or death.

Emma had impressed her when she had pushed back her fear in that alley to fight the gang members, so much so that Sophia had decided to become friends with her. And in return, she had helped Sophia by giving her Hebert as a punching back.

Emma had been convinced that together they would have been able to bring out Hebert's strength if they just pushed her a little. Sophia had been more than a little skeptical when she had met the girl, Hebert was nothing but skin and bones with a motor mouth, cowing when confronted with almost insulting ease.

But she couldn't deny that the sight of someone cowering before Sophia, not Shadow Stalker, didn't bring a pleasant feeling. It was a sign that she couldn't only be strong as Shadow Stalker, but that she could be powerful in her civilian identity as well.

This was a feeling that she was now desperately regretting.

"SH-" her curse was cut off as she was forced to dive off the building as a serrated spear that was about as tall as she was took residency in the spot she had occupied two seconds ago.

She supposed she should have seen it coming. The locker was a trigger-worthy event if there ever was one, being stuck inside a small space filled with garbage and everyone outside laughing at you after two years of being socially isolated from everyone. Yeah, she could see how that might make someone snap. But the thought that Hebert might actually become strong and push back was an almost completely alien concept to her. She had worked the girl so well that she had been reduced to eating her lunches in the bathroom rather than risk her wrath in the cafeteria. The thought that Hebert could pull something like this off was virtually unbelievable.

She had been excited when Armsmaster had announced that there was a new dangerous vigilante in town. One that wasn't afraid to get her hands a little dirty and deal with the criminal scum permanently.

In the small part of her mind that wasn't devoted to directing herself through the hazardous situation around her or dominated by terror, she realized that under normal circumstances she would have never done this. Coming alone to meet a new cape was beyond foolish. But after being forced to patrol with those entitled idiots for over a year the thought of being able to talk to another parahuman who understood was a breath of fresh air that she desperately needed.

Because she needed this. Even Emma's understanding was limited because she wasn't a parahuman. She didn't get what it was like to have this power thrumming under your skin, to know that you had the power to actually do something against the foot crushing your windpipe.

She had been so excited to meet a cape who understood what that the real world wasn't made up of knights in shining armor but filled with pain and fear.

The fact that she just happened to be Taylor Hebert was extraordinarily bad luck.

She allowed herself to shift into her shadow state as she hit the rooftop below, phasing through concrete, insulation, and plaster to come to an empty room. It had clearly been abandoned for some time to the boards covering the windows were any indication. Shadow Stalker tried to calm down, but it was hard to do so when her heart was about to burst from her ribcage. Her powers had always provided her protection against most physical and some exotic attacks apart from electrical currents, a fact that had never bothered her because there was no villain in the Bay who used electrical attacks in their arsenal. That no name Grue could interfere with her power but she wasn't scared of him, he always ran when faced with stiff competition. But this…

Shadow Stalker rubbed her chest as a phantom pain of being literally torn in two set her chest on fire. It had felt like she was being ripped apart and stitched back together with pins and needles. Grue's powers were an annoyance, this was painful. She did not want to be on the receiving end of those shadow horses, especially if they could interfere with her powers like Hebert could.

Shadow Stalker yelped in surprise as the window closest to her exploded inwards as shards of glass and plywood scattered through the room. As she retook her physical form after making sure she wasn't about to get glass in her eyes she paled at the sight of the towering horse. Its sandy skin seemed to shift like buzz saws around the area that formed the mouth and its solid yellow eyes burned with a deep-seated hatred.

The horse let out a bone chilling neigh as it charged forward, its hooves crushing the glass and wood fragments that cluttered the near empty room as it raced towards her and blinding speeds. With a tremendous effort, Shadow Stalker managed to overcome her instinct to phase through the rampaging equine and managed to roll to the side.

As she rolled across the cracked hardwood floor she grabbed a piece of plywood debris and slammed it against the snout of the shadowy minion as it turned its head around to face her. Its head snapped to the side from the force of the blow and took off part of its snout as wooden splinters dug into it's from, but her victory was short lived. Instead of going down the horse repaired the damage done and slowly turned its head towards her. Shadow Stalker gulped at the look of annoyance and disbelief that had mixed in with the anger that dominated its eyes.

Shadow Stalker jumped back mere seconds before the horse lashed out once more, black teeth shining even in the lightless room. She took her incorporeal form and jumped through and out the wall, just narrowly missing having a bite taken out of her by the nightmarish horse. She heard a thud as the wall shook a bit while she floated down, the horse having apparently struck the wall at full speed. If the horses' bodies were made of the same material as Hebert's whip then she didn't doubt that they would be able to hurt her in her shadow state, which severely limited her close combat options.

Not that she wanted to get into close combat with one of those things. For all that they looked like a horse, they moved like wolves. Very vicious man mauling wolves.

As she retook her physical form on the street she took stock of her situation. She was in the slums, which meant that it was about thirty minutes to get to the PRT headquarters downtown, and that was if she went in a straight line. She doubted that Hebert was going to let her get away that easy.

"Leaving so soon?"

Shadow Stalker looked up to see Hebert standing out of a shadow on the side of the building, standing up straight as if she wasn't positioned horizontally in relation to the ground twenty feet below. Her dark robe seemed to almost melt into the darkness as she gave a wicked grin.

"Why we're just getting started," she said.

As if on some unseen signal the demonic horses poured off the roof, running down the building as if it was solid ground, their black forms glittering in the pale moonlight, their sharp yellow eyes burning the dark around them.

Sophia ran.

6:03

Shadow Stalker pressed herself up against the wall as best she could as she glanced out the cracked and stained window. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest as she eyed the monsters below. They appeared to be milling around, occasionally sniffing the odd thing or two as they continued their search for her, seemingly unaware that she was in the studio not fifteen feet above them.

She doubted that she had lost them, they had proven to be particularly skilled in tracking their prey. Every time she thought she had given them the slip and made a break for the PRT headquarters or one of the Protectorate patrol routes she was cut off and forced back deeper into Boogeyman's territory.

She had stopped referring to Boogeyman as Hebert in her head because that _thing_ wasn't the wimpy Taylor Hebert that she had spent the last two years bullying. That creature was a monster.

"You shouldn't be that surprised," the monster's voice called out from the shadows.

Shadow Stalker's hand twitched to pull out the makeshift knife she had managed to make from a piece of broken glass. It was hardly the safest or most effective weapon, but Boogeyman wasn't giving her too many options. Any attempt to try and get a real weapon, one that made her feel comfortable and powerful resulted in her nearly being torn in two by Boogeyman's scythe.

She was forced to repress a full body shiver at the thought of that blade. Even if she wasn't permanently hurt in her shadow state it still hurt just as much as the real thing. "Surprised about what?" Shadow Stalker asked as she nervously eyed every shadow in the very dark room.

"What you did to me was monstrous Sophia," she said, her voice echoing throughout the abandoned room.

Shadow Stalker froze as a hand wrapped around her shoulder. Even though her costume had protection from temperatures she could still feel the ice-cold grip that tightened as the voice whispered into her ear, "So are you really surprised it made a monster?"

Shadow Stalker let out a screech as she tore herself from the monster's grip and twisted so that she could slash her throat out. But all she caught was empty air and a taunting grin as she faded back into the shadows. Shadow Stalker heaved for breath but was given no respite as a handful of the demonic horses tore through the windows, showering her in glass.

The first horse fell out of pure luck. As she reflexively reacted to an attack from and attacker that she didn't have a clear view of she flailed her piece of broken glass around wildly. The horse lets out an ear-piercing scream as the shard of sharp glass struck one of its eyes, lodging itself inside. The horse's head collapsed in on itself and the rest of the body followed like a sand castle being washed away by the tide. But her victory was short lived as the two other horses clamped their jaws around her arms with their vice-like grips.

She thrashed with all the force she could muster, but the horses' grip remained tight around her upper arms. She lurched backwards as the two minions started to drag her to the other end of the room. She tried to pull herself up and regain her balance so she could resist, but her boots just kept sliding across the dusty floor with each attempt.

She took to her shadow state and then immediately regretted it as both of her arms lit up like they were being torn apart. Instead of floating harmlessly through the floor to escape she fell gasping on the ground in her physical form. She tried to push herself up to run, but she was pulled back by the horses as the shut their jaws around her ankles this time and started to pull.

She could hear the stomping of hooves and the grinding of teeth behind her as she was dragged deeper into the dark shadows of the building.

Sophia screamed.

3:18

Shadow Stalker cautiously poked her head inside the warehouse. It was an old empty thing, but the lack of anything to block her vision worked towards her advantage. Hopefully, it would be easier to keep track of all the shadows that surrounded her.

It was a nerve-wracking thing to step through the various shadows that blocked her path to the well-lit center of the room. She could still feel flesh being torn from flesh as millions of angry buzz saws ran over her face and neck as she was pulled into the darkness. She wasn't even sure how she had managed to escape but she considered herself fortunate that they weren't able to finish what they had started. She wasn't eager to learn what would happen if most of your skin was torn from your body.

"What's the matter, Sophia? Afraid of the dark?" a voice called out from inside the blackness. Sophia managed to keep herself from jumping in surprise at the sound of the taunting voice, but none the less felt very nervous as she eyed each shadow.

"Why don't you come out and show yourself?" Shadow Stalker asked with as much bravo as she could muster.

An amused chuckle echoed through the room that made her skin break out into goosebumps.

"Alright then, but I think you'll freak with what I have to show you," Boogeyman said in a childish sing-song voice.

Shadow Stalker tensed up as Boogeyman emerged from the shadows like a vengeful ghost. An amused but angry look was plastered on her face.

"Don't know how you're already so ugly," Shadow Stalker taunted. Perhaps not the best idea, but mocking Hebert for her appearance was old ground. It made her feel safer in the seemingly endless nightmare.

Boogeyman's face curled into a sneer that quickly gave way to a small smile. Her wrist flicked and something small skidded against the floor.

The clattering sound came to a stop as something bumped against her foot. Shadow Stalker looked down and what she saw made her blood run cold.

It was a toy car and an old one at that. Most of its paint had been chipped off and one of the wheels was obviously a replacement. The number thirty-three was scratched onto the hood of the toy replica to take the place of the sticker that had long since peeled off.

Normally she wouldn't care about some dumb old toy, but this one was different. This one she recognized. How could she not when she kept on tripping over it?

It was the same toy that her younger brother Thomas. It was just a stupid toy that he had always kept and one that she had mocked him for keeping on numerous occasions. But to see it here, in Boogeyman's hands meant…

 _No._

"What did you do?" Shadow Stalker asked, her voice a low growl, her mind racing through all the various things that she would do to Boogeyman if she had harmed one hair on her little brother's head.

Boogeyman just grinned as if it was all one big joke, "So you do care about someone besides yourself. I was beginning to wonder. I mean, I would have thought someone as weak as Thomas would have been under your attention."

"What did you do to him?!" Shadow Stalker screeched in a terror filled voice that only someone who was an older sibling would be able to understand. A chill went up her spine at the realization that she hadn't talked to her mother or her younger sibling since this morning, which meant that Boogeyman could have had all day to work whatever horrors she could devise.

Boogeyman's smile just widened. "The real question is - what did you do, Sophia?"

Shadow Stalker roared.

It was a primal thing, borne of fear and desperation. She charged the smirking Boogeyman, uncaring that she lacked any weapons aside from her fists. She slammed into Boogeyman with her entire body, knocking the surprised monster to the ground.

Then she started to punch.

It felt like punching a brick wall and would probably end up hurting her fists just as much, but it felt good to feel her tormentor's head snap to the side as she struck her in the cheeks again and again. After a few more moments, she stopped. Her knuckles felt like they were on fire and she could feel a slight trickle of blood run down on the inside of her costume, but the monster below her wasn't moving.

Shadow Stalker turned around at the sound of snorting and growled at the sight of about a dozen of Hebert's minions standing down the street, glaring at her with their yellow eyes. They twitched and padded their hooves against the asphalt, but they made no move to take her. Shadow Stalker pulled herself off Hebert and started to scream at the minions.

"What are you going to do now?!" she shouted, her voice bouncing off the surrounding buildings. They outnumbered her but she didn't care. She was still on the euphoric high of the adrenaline rush that had allowed her to beat some sense back into Hebert. She proved her wrong, she was still strong and Hebert was still a weak little pus-

Shadow Stalker's train of thought derailed as a small noise caught her attention. Turning back around to the prone Hebert she saw that the girl wasn't as unconscious as she had thought as her shoulders appeared to be shaking. For a second she thought that Hebert was crying (as would be fitting for someone as weak as her) only to realize as the girl pulled herself up with a huge grin on her face that she was _laughing._

Shadow Stalker took a step back despite herself as Hebert loomed over her, wide grin etched onto her features. Shadow Stalker realized with a dry throat that she had never actually recognized how tall Hebert was compared to her. It was almost freakish in a way how she was a good head and a half taller than her despite being the same age.

"You know that beating you just gave me?" Boogeyman asked, her eyes filled with cruelty and mirth. She leaned down into Shadow Stalker's face until their eyes were mere inches from each other. "It tickled."

Out of pure reflex Shadow Stalker's right fist shot out to strike Boogeyman in the face. But instead, her fist stopped dead cold as Boogeyman caught it in her iron tight grip. Shadow Stalker pounded and clawed with her free hand and feet, but Boogeyman's hand remained firmly wrapped around her fist.

"I've been thinking," Boogeyman said in an amiable tone that set Shadow Stalker's teeth on edge as she redoubled her efforts to free herself. Her free hand clawed against the girl's chest, but she didn't appear to be very concerned. "Since you weren't strong enough to keep your weapon, and you aren't strong enough to hurt me, you don't need this hand, do you?"

It only took Shadow Stalker a split second to recognize what Boogeyman was implying.

"Wait don-" her plea for mercy was cut off by a blood curling scream as the twenty-seven bones that made up her hand were shattered. She fell to the ground screaming her lungs out as she clutched her now useless hand against her chest. Bits of bone tore through her skin and gloves while blood poured out of her wounds.

"What's the matter, Sophia?" Boogeyman taunted, her cold voice just barely worming its way through the cloud of pain the shrouded her awareness. "Isn't this what you believe in? That the strong can bully the weak. Because right now you seem pretty weak to me."

Shadow Stalker did nothing to respond but sob harder as her broken hand was wracked with nearly unbearable pain.

But pain gave way to terror as she managed to see through the veil of tears that had obscured her vision to see that Boogeyman and her minions were standing over her with very eager expressions. Shadow Stalker held back a choked sob as she returned to her shadow state. The pain immediately lessened as her body lost its corporeal form and her broken hand ceased to exist as a solid structure.

She phased through the floor with all the speed she could muster as the horses closed in. She could hear them slamming against the floor as she floated down a story below them. But instead of retaking her much faster physical body to flee from her pursuers she chose to remain as she was. It would hardly be ideal, but at the very least she wouldn't have to deal with the pain and sight of a mangled hand.

Unfortunately for Shadow Stalker, her reprieve was short lived as Boogeyman tore out of the many shadows that dotted the room, scythe in hand. She barely had any time to recognize the threat before said scythe cleaved her into two pieces.

"You don't get out that easily Sophia," Boogeyman said with a grin as said Ward was forced to retake physical form while the phantom pain of being cut in half forced her to her knees.

Sophia pleaded.

0:09

She wasn't sure how long it had been. Four hours? Five? All she knew is that it had felt like an eternity. She had torn a piece of her cloak off to use as a makeshift bandage for her broken hand. It still hurt, but she had been forced to push through it to avoid even greater suffering from Boogeyman capturing her.

She wasn't exactly sure when she had given up trying to get away to the PRT, maybe it was the third or fourth hour, but Boogeyman had made it very clear that she wasn't getting away until she decided she was done playing with her.

She limped down the empty street slowly as she clutched her shattered hand close to her chest. Her legs flared in pain with each step, a result of running for so long with little to no rest. Her body was wracked with pain as she forced herself to moved further and further down the street. She kept to the sideway, but as close to the spotty streetlights as she could. She had learned her lesson about stepping into the shadows.

Her ribs still ached from those punches and she was pretty sure one of them was broken because it hurt each time she breathed.

Her footsteps faltered for a moment as something caught her eye.

Just inside a ring of light surrounding a functioning streetlight was a payphone. Shadow Stalker's spirits soared as she raced towards the phone will all the speed she could muster, even as her body burned and screaming in protest.

All she had to do was call the PRT emergency hotline and then they would come find her. Even if Boogeyman interrupted the call they would still be obligated to investigate and the blood trail she had left would at least indicate that something was wrong.

Her breath caught as she reached the outer ring of the light and stretched her hand out to grab onto the glorious black receiver that called to her.

"AUUGH," she cried out as she fell to the ground. Her mask protected her face as she slammed into the ground, but she could feel her sides flare up again as her injured ribs protested at the harsh treatment. She moved to drag herself over to her freedom which laid only a few feet away, but she started to feel something pulling her back. Shadow Stalker felt tears form in her eyes at the sound of the taunting voice.

"Come now, Sophia. We can't have you ruining all the fun, can we?" Boogeyman said with what Shadow Stalker assumed as a sick grin plastered onto her face. Shadow Stalker screeched in terror and pain as she tried to pull herself away from the walking nightmare. She desperately clawed at the asphalt with her hands even as her broken one left a bloody trail behind it, flaring in agony the entire time as shredded flesh and shattered bones scraped against the ground.

"Please," Shadow Stalker sobbed as her efforts to unite with the payphone remained unsuccessful. Boogeyman only laughed at her shrill pleas for mercy.

When she finally came to a stop she desperately tried to scramble to her feet to make an escape, to reach the freedom that taunted her by staying just out of her reach. She made it to her knees before she was kicked back down. She groaned in pain while she curled in on herself to try and provide herself some modicum of protection.

"It's really amazing isn't it," Boogeyman said as she circled her prone form like a vulture. "How you can see someone every day, but never really get to know the person behind the mask they put up."

Shadow Stalker gurgled in protest as Boogeyman's hand wrapped around her throat and heaved her off her feet. Shadow Stalker let her arms fall limply to her sides. She already knew that trying to break Boogeyman's grip would be an exercise in futility. She could probably get out using her shadow state, but she would be subjecting herself to the intense pain of phasing through whatever Boogeyman's body was made of and the pain of being torn in half.

"You have two masks, Sophia," Boogeyman said as she pulled the Ward's mask off her face. Shadow Stalker felt a welcome rush of cool air hit her sweaty face, but it was tainted by the slasher smile that Boogeyman was giving her. She seemed to eye her mask like it was some sort of stranger creature.

"You have one for your cape persona, and one for your civilian identity, but neither of them are who you really are, are they?" Boogeyman asked as she threw her into the side of a building. Shadow Stalker grunted as she hit the brick wall and slid to the ground, unmoving as Boogeyman stalked forward. "That's all I'm doing really. Removing you masks so the whole world can see how _weak_ you are."

Boogeyman dropped the mask to the ground and Sophia flinched as she crushed it under her foot. The hockey like mask that had defined part of her existence shattered into a dozen pieces. Boogeyman's yellow eyes seemed to glow in the dim lighting as Sophia pressed herself against the wall as tightly as she could, tear streaking down her face.

"Because that's what you are - weak," Boogeyman said in a mocking tone as if she was speaking to a small child.

"It's almost disappointing really," Boogeyman said in a conversational tone as she drew herself closer to the shaking girl. "I was expecting something more interesting to show itself when I tore away your masks. A monster, a psychopath maybe. Something that would make me understand why you did all those things at Winslow. Why you thought it was a good idea to hunt people down like animals. Why you got a power that only let you run away."

Sophia cowered as Boogeyman drew herself closer, to the point where their noses were almost touching. For a long moment, Boogeyman did nothing but stare at her with a cold and empty gaze. To Sophia, it felt like they layer of her very being were being pulled back so that the monster before her could get a good look of what laid beneath. Then finally she spoke in a near whisper, her words as chilling as the arctic winds.

"The truth. You're just a scared little girl."

Sophia broke down sobbing.

She wasn't sure how long she spent with tears streaking down her face and snot running down her nose, but when she managed to pull herself back together enough to see Boogeyman was still staring at her with those cold eyes. Sophia couldn't help but squirm at the disappointing gaze that her former punching bag gave her like she had been expecting fireworks and got a sparkler instead.

"Please…just get it over with," Sophia said, her voice raw and raspy. Hours ago, if someone had asked her if she would be willing to die she would have shot that person in the throat. Now, after eight hours of what could only be described as torture, she was more than ready if it meant that Boogeyman would just end this. She couldn't stand the thought of not being able to protect herself, of being able to fight back. She didn't want to listen to what Boogeyman had to say anymore, she _couldn't._

"You thought I was trying to kill you?" Boogeyman asked in faux surprised tone. "Oh Sophia, it was never about avoiding death, it was about surviving."

"Wha…" Sophia managed to gasp out, clearly confused.

Boogeyman just smirked, "I never said anything about killing you, Sophia. I mean, as if I would let you off that _easy_. No, it was about seeing if your masks would survive. If Shadow Stalker and Sophia would survive if they were brought to the edge."

Boogeyman's smirk stretched into a wide bone-chilling grin. "They didn't."

Sophia flinched again as Boogeyman gave a hearty laugh at that. "This is my victory, Sophia. I showed your true self. Now you get to live with that for the rest of your life," she hissed.

"It-it's over?" Sophia asked, her heart swelling up with hope. A hope that was quickly crushed by Boogeyman's crackling.

"Over? No, not over. Never over. Tonight, I showed you who you really are. Now, I'm going to reveal to the world what's beneath your mask, so that you can live for the rest of your life aware that _everyone_ knows that you're just a scared little girl, Sophie."

She recoiled at the mention of the pet name that man had given her while under her mother's roof.

"I'll leave you to yourself then," Boogeyman said as she backed up from the sobbing girl. Sophia paid no attention as she let out a single wordless cry as she shrunk in on herself. She didn't notice as Boogeyman faded back into the shadows, nor did she notice when PRT vans pulled up a few minutes later asking her is she needed medical attention.

All she did was sob for the power that she had lost, for the confidence and security that had been taken from her.

Gone was the Shadow Stalker who was the terror of criminals. Gone was the Sophia who ruled Winslow with fear.

In their place laid a young woman who had been broken and never healed. Who had endured torment from a man that her own mother had invited into her house. A girl who used her anger to hide her insecurities from the world around her.

She sobbed because she knew that Boogeyman was right.

And that was the most terrifying thing of all.

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	10. Shadow 2-3

**Enjoy!**

Shadow 2.3

6:42 A.M.

"Well?"

Madison Clements shivered as Tay- no Boogeyman walked out of her shadow. She whimpered as she placed her cold hands on her shoulders, not enough to hurt her, but enough to keep her from doing anything stupid.

Not that Madison had plans to do anything. Boogeyman had thoroughly erased any form of resistance from her days ago. Having a shadow horse, or Nightmare as she apparently called them, watch her in her sleep was more than enough to dissuade calling for help.

And after watching the video she couldn't help but feel that she had made the right choice.

She didn't like Sophia that much. She had hung out with her in the past because of her relationship with Emma who was one of the top dogs in the school, not because she was appealing as a conversationalist. She was just too aggressive; everything was an argument to her and her sadistic streak was rather frightening. She had been okay with calling Hebert names and socially isolating her but the locker was way beyond anything that even in her wildest dreams would have thought appropriate.

She had protested and threatened to go to the principle if they didn't let Hebert out, but then Sophia had threatened to break her legs and while she doubted that she would have done it there was a glint in her eyes that made her comply.

Then Hebert disappeared.

The pile of garbage and filth that had been shoved inside was still present in the locker, but there wasn't any sign of their classmate. Emma and Sophia thought that one of the other students who they had bullied from time to time when they wanted some variety from Hebert had let the girl out and pushed it out of their minds. Madison's imagination hadn't been so easily assuaged.

Nightmares of Taylor dying in the locker and having her cold corpse shoved into a dumpster by Sophia haunted her subconscious. She had read up on what being exposed to such toxic material like the ones they had filled the locker with would do to a person if left untreated for an extended time.

She had gotten plenty of nightmare fuel from reading those.

She supposed the fact that Sophia was Shadow Stalker explained a lot of things about her. Why the school never seemed to come down on them when they were bullying Hebert even if it started to get physical. Even if it was right in front of the teacher's view. Why she always preferred physical threats and actions over verbal ones.

It made her stomach churn at the thought that someone like that was considered a hero. But even then, witnessing what Boogeyman did to Sophia made bile rise in her throat.

For the past few hours, she had gotten to watch in HD glory as Sophia Hess was physically and psychologically tortured to the breaking point. It was disturbing to see how Boogeyman played her like a fiddle, pushing all the right buttons at just the right times. She had been forced to throw up near the end, when Sophia broke down completely, leaving her an empty unresponsive shell of what she used to be.

"I-I downloaded the last file," Madison managed to get out. She didn't want to do this, even to someone as morally bankrupt as Sophia. But the video had been a warning as much as it had been a part of the plan, "do what I say, or this will happen to you".

Not that she needed any more evidence that working against Boogeyman would be a bad idea.

"Are they ready to send?" Boogeyman asked, her fingers curling around her shoulders in a subtle warning of what would happen to her if her answer was no.

"Yes," Madison managed to squeak out. "I-I have them all ready to send."

For the past few weeks, Madison had been forced to wear a recording device at school. Boogeyman had ordered her to tease as much information about the bullying as she could out of the other students. Honestly, it hadn't been that hard. Even though Hebert had been missing from school during the time after the locker, those that had been part of Emma's clique had been all too eager to add their own two cents in an effort to get in the redhead's good graces.

Getting Sophia and Emma to talk about the "brilliance" of the locker took even less effort.

It was disturbing how gleefully they talked about ruining Hebert's life as if it was all a game to them. Even more so, that merely days before she had been one of them, all too eager to throw Hebert under the bus to get a good laugh and some social standing.

But Boogeyman hadn't been satisfied with mere recordings. She had Madison scour the entire school, searching for anyone who had taped the events on their phones for posterities sake. She gave her journals filled with hundreds of instances of bullying to scan and passwords to email addresses choked full with hate mail and death threats. And as Madison started to compile them onto her computer she realized the full scale of what she and the others had wrought upon Hebert.

It was sickening in the least to read through and realize just how much they had ruined this girl's life, and for what? A laugh or two to amuse themselves.

"You know what to do," Boogeyman said as she pulled back from Madison's shoulders, giving the younger girl a little room to breathe. Madison paused as she started at the bright monitor before her. Gigabytes of data all compressed into a single email ready to be blasted across the bay. A single email that would ruin her life and the lives of dozens of others as the knowledge of what they did was made public to everyone.

Her finger hovered over the send button. If she did this, then she would be arrested. She would be complicit in revealing a Ward's secret identity and who knows what charges she would get from everything she had done at the school. Pushing the button would effectively end her life as she knew it.

Yet, part of her wanted to push it. She wanted to get over this guilt that plagued her every night as she tossed and turned in bed whilst the yellow-eyed Nightmare looked on. This would be a chance for redemption, an opportunity to do something right for once.

The click of the mouse as she depressed the right key held a certain finality to it. In the half second, it took the computer to process the instructions of the mouse and carry them out, the email that contained virtually every instance of bullying that Taylor Hebert had been subjected to for the past two years was sent to every news outlet in the Bay and beyond. It was sent to the school board and other various education watchdog organizations. Now it wouldn't matter if Winslow ignored what was going on inside its halls because now everyone knew what they were doing.

"It's done," Madison said, slumping in her seat in sweet relief. She turned back towards Boogeyman, who was sitting on the edge of her bed with a strange glint in her yellow eyes. Madison felt her throat clench up at the unnatural stare, but she still managed to squeak out, "I-it is done, right?"

"Well Madison, that depends," Boogeyman said, her voice as dry as the desert. "Do you think two weeks of assistance under duress will make up two years of torment?"

Madison would have gulped if her throat hadn't gone so dry. Boogeyman had yet to move from her cross-legged position on the edge of her bed, but something in the atmosphere had changed. It was colder, tenser, _dangerous._

"I helped you," Madison argued, her voice a faint whisper. For a moment, she saw Boogeyman's eyes light up in a flash of anger, but it disappeared as quickly as it came.

"You helped me because the alternative was worse," Boogeyman said as she stood up in a slow deliberate manner. Madison felt her knees start to quake as the grey skinned parahuman towered over her. "Not because of the guilt you felt for what you did."

Madison opened her mouth to explain that she had no choice, that she had to keep quiet, but was cut off as Boogeyman swiped her hand in the air. "You took the easy path because you don't have the will or courage to take the harder way. If I hadn't come here you would have kept silent because it was easier for you to do, wouldn't you?"

Madison wanted to say no, that she would have come clean, that she would have told her parents what their little angel of a daughter was doing at school.

But she knew she wouldn't have.

Because Boogeyman was right, she _would_ have kept quiet. She would have trotted along with her life as best she could while the soul-crushing guilt of what she had done weighed down on her. She wouldn't have told her parents that their darling little angel was actually a demon, and they would still cling to the illusion that she was a good daughter, a good person.

Madison felt tears streaking down her cheeks as she stared up at Boogeyman who had a carefully blank expression on her face.

"I didn't- they made me," Madison tried to choke out through the fitful sobbing that overcame her form.

"In the end, they did force you," Boogeyman agreed, but there was not a trace of mercy or compassion hidden away behind that stone-cold expression. "But in the beginning, they _didn't._ "

Madison tried to grab the hem of Boogeyman's robe to sob into, so she could explain why she had done all of those horrible things. But Boogeyman took a step back as her arms stretched out, and all her open hand caught was empty air. She fell to her hands and knees on the floor crying as Boogeyman continued to speak, uncaring of her current state.

"At first you did it because it felt good," Boogeyman said as she stared down at the shaking brunette. "It felt nice to see me squirm under your gaze, glancing over my shoulder to look out for your next prank. It felt nice to indulge in all of those dark thoughts that you had suppressed over the years until it became a habit."

"Please," Madison begged through her watery tears.

"That's how it happens, Madison. You start off small- a spitball here and there, but you just keep on doing more because it will never be enough. That's how angels can become devils. That's how you became a monster."

Madison said nothing as she silently cried onto the hardwood floor. She shoulders shaking with the silent sobs that wracked her entire body.

"But I suppose I'm not entirely without mercy," Boogeyman said. Madison's head shot up, hope swelling up in her heart. "I'll give you a choice, you can go tell your parents what a little devil their angel has become, or…"

Boogeyman's hands slunk into her robes and pulled something out. Madison felt her heart skip a beat at the sight of the pistol. It wasn't the first time she had seen a gun, anyone who lived in the Bay for a few years had seen more than their fair share. She didn't recognize the type of pistol other than it looked a lot like the ones in secret agent movies.

"You can take the easy way out and just end all your guilt right now," Boogeyman said as she tossed the cold lifeless thing onto her bed. The black metal stuck out like a sore thumb on her sky-blue sheets.

"I'll leave you to make your choice, but we both know which one you're going to choose," Boogeyman said with a small smirk as she slipped back into the shadows. Madison shuddered as she forced herself to her feet. Her blue eyes locked onto the deceptively innocent looking pistol that laid in her bedsheets as if it wasn't a tool of death and destruction.

Madison wasn't sure how long she spent staring at the gun, but the next thing she knew she was holding the pistol in her hands while she sat on the edge of her bed, contemplating her choices. She could step outside of her room, wake her parents up and tell them what a horrible human being she was, forever tainting her in their eyes. Worse still, she would be subjecting them to retaliation by the Empire. A white girl helping a black girl to bully a white girl, it didn't take a genius to see that the Empire would jump all over that headline.

Images of Molotov cocktails crashing through the windows filled her mind as her parents were burned alive. Thoughts of her mother being stalked and raped by a group of gangbangers while her father was gunned down outside his workplace.

But if she was gone it might mitigate what would happen to them, it might keep them from getting killed because of her actions. They might never forgive her, but at the very least they would be alive.

The barrel was tasteless and cold as she shoved it between her lips. The cool metal brought a chill to her mouth that did nothing to help with the hot tears that streamed down her face.

It was like Boogeyman said, they both knew she would take the easy way out.

She shut her eyes as she squeezed the trigger like she had seen in the movies as she waited for the deafening bang that would end her miserable existence.

 _*Click*_

Madison cautiously opened her wet eyes at the noise that defiantly didn't sound like a gun going off. Nor did it feel like her brain stem had been ripped apart by a piece of metal traveling at hundreds of miles per hour.

She squeezed the trigger again.

 _*Click*_

Madison tore the gun out of her mouth and frowned as she fumbled with the part of the pistol that housed the bullets. She managed to wrench it open to find it not full with life taking bullets, but a rolled-up strip of paper.

Sliding the paper out into her palm she unrolled it to see a message that made the hot tears of despair well up inside her once more.

 _Did you really think I would let you off that easily?_

Madison shrieked in rage and misery that her way out had been taken from her. She threw the gun to the side, uncaring for the loud thud it made as it struck the wall. Her hands cupped her face as hot tears and snot ran down her face once more. All she wanted to do was for this to all _**end**_.

 _The world shattered._

 _Beings vaster than she could comprehend filled the sky in a dance she could not understand._

 _Destination._

 _Agreement._

 _Trajectory._

 _Agreement._

* * *

"Has she moved?" Boogeyman asked as she emerged from the shadows next to one of her Nightmares. The first light of dawn was starting to creep over the horizon with an almost glacial slowness, but it still felt like she was being put in front of a tanning bed. It didn't hurt yet, but it was irritating for the time being.

The demonic horse shook its head with a snort.

"Good," Boogeyman muttered as she stared at the innocuous looking warehouse below, the only sign that something wasn't right was the pair of guards that stood outside the main door.

She did feel a brief pang of guilt for doing what she did to Madison since the girl did feel genuinely guilty for the part she took in her suffering. But that guilt was largely overshadowed by the anger she felt for having to spend the last two years of her life subjected to Madison's laughter and immature pranks.

 _Feeling guilty doesn't wash away your sins,_ Boogeyman thought with a bitter edge.

At any rate, she was done with Madison for now. She had played her part and would now spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder like Taylor used to every day in school. Right now, she had other concerns to deal with.

Like the new Tinker, the ABB had picked up.

The Cornell bomber had been a pretty big attention grabber on the news a few weeks ago. A new Tinker blowing up part of a highly-respected school - that was bound to turn a few heads. Boogeyman's first thought had been to simply eliminate her and remove the threat in its entirety when a thought struck her.

 _What if that had been me?_

She didn't expect to get any real public appreciation for what she was doing, but what if the first action after getting her powers hadn't been to hide away but to go Carrie on Winslow? Would they had vilified her as a psychotic villain because of one bad day and disregard everything that had led up to it? Could the Cornell bomber be just like her, someone who had been bullied and isolated for years on end? It wasn't like anyone had died in the explosions that had leveled part of the college, and she doubted that the woman in question had joined the ABB willingly, it wasn't like most people could say "no" to Lung.

So here she was, getting ready to have a discussion with the infamous Cornell bomber in her own workshop.

Was it a risk? Yes of course it was. The Cornell bomber could actually be a megalomaniacal psychopath who implanted bombs into people's heads for the fun of it. But if that was her down there wouldn't she have wanted someone to hear her side of the story?

And it wasn't like this was an entirely selfless act. She was willing to commit to this risk because the Tinker might be useful in her goals to rid the city of the gangs. As much as she loathed to admit it, even in the secrecy of her own thoughts, she couldn't do this all by herself. There was always going to be the one cape that she wouldn't be able to beat or the one angle she hadn't considered. Even if it was just to have someone to act as a sounding board for her ideas that wasn't spawned by her powers.

"Go back to the lair," Boogeyman ordered. The Nightmare neighed and shifted back into the shadow, eager to get away from the growing dawn light.

Boogeyman dived into the shadow, twisting through the sheer empty nothingness of the shadow zone until she reached her target. She emerged from a dark spot on the wall in utter silence as shadows ran off her form like tar. As she stepped into the well-lit room she took a moment to take in her surroundings.

The warehouse had been converted into a very crude workshop with haphazardly assembled equipment scattered around the multitude of tables that had been set up to accommodate the bomb Tinker. The parahuman in question was hunched over one of the tables, welding mask on as small sparks and wisps of smoke emerged from underneath her power tools. Aside from her, the only other person in the building was a single middle-aged man who looked like he had dozed off while listening to his music if the headphones sticking out of his ears were any indication.

Boogeyman approached the Tinker cautiously, careful not to disturb her or her slumbering guard. Once she was about five feet away from the parahuman she cleared her throat.

The cape's shoulder slumped in response as the welding torch she had been using cut off. "Dammit Lee, I'll have the next batch done when -GAH!"

Boogeyman had to hold back an amused smirk as the cape almost jumped a foot in the air in surprise at her appearance. It wouldn't help her case if dear Jennifer thought she was being mocked.

"Who the fu - how did -" Jennifer sputtered, eyes wide behind the tinted glass of her welding mask. Boogeyman could see the woman's hand twitch towards the half-finished product behind her before thinking the better of it. A faint trace of fear wafted off her form at thought of the device going off while she was still in the blast radius. Boogeyman's could see her eyes flicker over to one of the completed devices on the other table as she considered the odds of reaching it before her head was removed from her shoulders.

Boogeyman raised an eyebrow. "How did I get here? The short answer is that I used my powers. The longer answer is that I used my powers. As for why I'm here? Well, Jennifer, tell me, do you want to spend the rest of your life wasting your brilliance by being forced to work for a jumped-up street thug?"

She would see the woman's muscles relax a bit as her eyes narrowed behind her mask in contemplation. There was still a healthy dose of fear but it was largely overshadowed by a burning hatred at the mention of the Dragon of Kyushu.

"I'm listening."

* * *

8:21 A.M.

Armsmaster could hear the servos of his suit grind against each other in protest as he clenched his hand at the sight of one of his Wards lying in a hospital bed. Her right hand was being suspended above the rest of her body by a sling to prevent the wound from bleeding out. Her face was red and scratched all over like she had been hit in the face by a weed whacker. But as much as he hated to admit it, his Wards were used to be injured. Brockton Bay villains didn't tend to pull their punches, and with Panacea in the city to heal any truly serious injuries the villains were far more willing to cut loose on the kids than they would in New York or Seattle.

"How is she?" Armsmaster asked the weary looking doctor as she passed through the door. He knew Dr. Jones from personal experience, she was the primary medical examiner for the Wards and local Protectorate and as such was well aware of the risks involved in heroing.

Dr. Jones sighed, "Physically she's stable. She has a few injuries that I'm worried about, particularly her hand, but since Panacea is going to come in and heal her up I don't foresee any complications. Mentally…that's a different story."

"How so?"

Dr. Jones shook her head, making her long dark brunette locks cascade down her shoulders like a waterfall. "I'm no psychologist, but I recognize a suicidal patient when I see one. She was trying to get to one of the knives before we managed to sedate her, I suggest you place her under guard so she doesn't try anything…drastic."

There was a faint trace of distaste underneath her words. Not so much at what Sophia had tried to do to herself, but rather the situation as a whole. Frankly, Armsmaster had to agree with her. The fact that Sophia had apparently been attacked on her way back home and was never reported missing was disturbing in of itself, the fact that attack was apparently so bad that Sophia had decided that taking her life would be a valid solution was even more so.

"Doctor, was there any evidence of…," Armsmaster paused as he considered how he wanted to word the question.

Fortunately for the Protectorate hero, the dark-skinned doctor understood what he was getting at. "No, we didn't find any obvious signs of sexual abuse, but whoever got to her did not pull their punches. They wanted her to suffer and they wanted her to live through it," she said with an angry glint in her dark brown eyes.

"…I see," Armsmaster said while his lips pursed in distaste.

"Even after Panacea heals her I'm going to want to keep her here for 72 hours, regardless of what your Director wants," Dr. Jones said with a slight sneer. Armsmaster frowned but nodded in agreement. It was well known that Doctor Jones and Director Piggot didn't get along very well with the dark-skinned doctor's rather vocal complaints about having untrained children fighting murders and monsters.

"Thank you, Dr. Jones," Armsmaster said with as much sincerity as he could muster. Doctor Jones nodded and walked off towards the front desk, leaving the tinker alone to his thoughts as he considered who was responsible for placing one of his Wards in the hospital.

The Empire was the most obvious suspect given Sophia's heritage and Kaiser had been making noise since the Merchant's destruction, but to attack a Ward? Kaiser was many things, but stupid was not one of them. He had to realize that attacking and brutalizing a Ward in any fashion would result in the full force of the Protectorate being brought down on him so fast that his head would spin. It would gain him nothing but the ire of the entire Protectorate and for what?

A frame up then? It would certainly make sense if someone wanted to have the Protectorate focus on the Empire. He dismissed Lung as a candidate right off the bat, the Asian parahuman had never shown any inclination towards such deceptions before. He might even take it as an insult to his power at the idea he was considered to be too weak to try and take the Empire out all by himself.

Coil then? The snake had never been an outright instigator of conflict, but he had shown great skill in playing sides against each other in the past. Still, this seemed a little too far out of his usual MO. Maybe…

"Sir!"

Armsmaster turned to see one of the PRT troopers whose name he didn't know running up to him with a pale face.

"What," he asked as he tried unsuccessfully to keep the frustration of the whole situation from seeping into his voice.

Fortunately, the PRT trooper didn't seem to notice, but his wide-eyed panicked expression did little to ease Armsmaster's nerves. "Sir, you need to see the news _right now_ ," the trooper said in a slightly out of breath voice that did little to detract from the urgency of his tone. Armsmaster frowned but complied with the request moving over to an empty room to switch on the television monitor held aloft on the wall. It took a few moments to get the blasted aged thing to turn on, all the while his power was going on about how he could fix it and make it more efficient, which certainly didn't help his concentration as he tried to find the right channel.

When he did, his blood went _cold_.

 _Breaking News- Brockton Bay Ward Shadow Stalker Implicated in Bullying Campaign!_

The headline flashed out in a bright yellow obnoxious font that made his eyes want to bleed. He didn't really hear anything the woman was saying on the screen, instead turning towards the PRT trooper who was now shaking in his boots at the sight of his now enraged boss.

"Double the guards at Shadow Stalker's room _now,_ " he growled in a tone that brooked no disobedience. The PRT trooper nodded shakily as he ran off with speeds that made Armsmaster wonder if he had a Mover rating as he turned back to the situation at hand.

He activated his helmet radio and connected directly to the Director's office. There was a faint click as Director Piggot answered her phone.

 _"What?"_

Armsmaster felt his lips purse into a thin line as he stared at the screen before him as images of a locker filled with rot and garbage flashed behind the somewhat green looking reporter.

"We have a problem."

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	11. Shadow 2-a

**Enjoy!**

Shadow 2.a

PRT ENE Director Emily Piggot was not having a good day.

She didn't have a chance to get many good days in Brockton Bay to begin within. The few good days that she did get were days where her city wasn't being burned down by a flaming rage dragon or having literal Nazis marching down the streets as if they owned the city. And while she didn't have the displeasure of having to deal with those groups at this very moment this was still a very bad day for her.

Her fist slammed down on her stainless-steel desk with enough force that the entire structure and everything on it shook. She was already starting to regret her decision as her hand throbbed in pain, but she needed to make sure that their entire focus would be on her.

"How the _hell_ did this happen, _Colin?"_

She could practically feel her rage boiling her blood as she stared the world-renowned Tinker down. She hadn't given him or Hannah the option of sitting down and getting comfortable, nor had she given them the luxury of coming to the meeting in their heroing costumes. Instead, they were wearing a pair of standard PRT uniforms. She wasn't going to give them the chance to relax with the magnitude of what they were facing lying before them.

She wasn't so petty to relish in the slight flinch from the Tinker, but it still made herself feel a bit better considering the FUBAR of a situation that had landed on her desk this morning. She could feel the tips of her nails start to cut into her skin as she glared at the Protectorate hero who looked like he was trying to figure out the best way of explaining the situation without pissing her off even more.

"Director, if I may," Hannah tried to butt in, no doubt sensing that her superior was floundering for an answer in the face her anger. She turned her furious gaze to the Blaster who closed her jaw with a click. Piggot could appreciate wanting to help a friend in need, but now was not the time for social niceties, not when she needed answers _now._ She took a deep breath and stared at the Tinker.

"Colin," she said again, her voice completely level and flat in comparison to the near blinding rage that had laced every word not a few seconds before. "What happened to Hess?"

"It appears that after leaving last night Shadow Stalker elected to make a route through the defunct Merchant territory despite numerous warnings," Colin said. To anyone who hadn't known the Tinker that well they might have mistaken his tone for one of disinterest or boredom, but Piggot could feel the simmering rage underneath his words. They way that he was biting the inside of his jaw, the fact that arms were ever so slightly trembling, he was just as angry as she was.

Good, they would need that anger once they had determined who the perpetrator was.

"Obviously," Piggot responded as she tried to keep her voice as flat and toneless as possible. "What I want to know is how she was missing for almost eight _hours_ without anyone realizing."

That was what concerned Piggot the most. The Wards got roughed up all the time in this city, and despite the obvious brutality, there was nothing really new about that. But the fact that it had apparently lasted for a very long period of time without anyone realizing that something was wrong with Shadow Stalker was very concerning. If there was a large enough gap in their security that they missed something as obvious as this, who was to say that there weren't other, subtle breaches of security hiding under their noses?

"Judging by what little we've been able to piece together there were a number of factors that prevented us from realizing what was happening," Colin said with as much professionalism as he could muster as he tried to keep his emotions over the situation from bubbling over.

"Such as?" Piggot asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Neither Mrs. Hess nor Agent Smith reported anything amiss last night. Mrs. Hess assumed that her daughter was out patrolling late and would return in the morning while Agent Smith assumed that Sophia had already returned home and simply failed to call in - as she has in the past," Colin reported. "That said, Agent Smith chose to inform her superior that Sophia had in fact arrived at home without any difficulty. At this time, we are still trying to determine whether this was malicious on her part or if she was just not doing her job."

"Another thing to bring up later," Piggot muttered. It always pained her to have to place any suspicion onto one of her subordinates, but if what the news was saying was true then Agent Smith was going to have a lot of explaining to do. "Go on."

"In addition, Sophia apparently chose to leave her Wards phone behind to avoid being tracked and moved into an area that had very little foot traffic. It is likely that there were no witness to the event, and even if there were I doubt that anyone who would willingly live in Merchant, former Merchant territory anyway, would choose to contact the PRT. At the very least we can assume that this entire debacle wasn't _entirely_ our fault," Colin explained, clearly trying to put a somewhat positive spin on the events.

Piggot gave the Tinker a dry look saying, "Yes, Colin, the public will be delighted to know that one of our Wards was brutalized and it was only _partially_ our fault." Colin flinched from the venom dripping off her voice, his bright blue eyes avoiding her gaze entirely as his jaw clenched in anger.

"I cannot begin to describe the magnitude of the screw up that we've found ourselves in," Piggot said as she tried to keep a sharp note of fear from entering her voice. The Wards program was founded on the pitch that the Protectorate and PRT would make sure that your kids would be kept safe and learn how to use their powers in a productive and nurturing environment. She knew that the second half of the pitch was utterly useless in a place like Brockton Bay, and if the gangs truly decided that the Wards were being too troublesome there would be little they could do to stop them, but it was the illusion of safety that was more important. So long as the gangs and the parents of the city thought that hurting a Ward would bring too much trouble down on their heads to deal with they would use their kiddy gloves with them and let them play at being heroes. It was a system that Piggot tried to exploit without mercy in an effort to get as much mileage out of her Wards as she could.

The fact that Shadow Stalker had apparently not only been traumatized by her attack but the knowledge that nobody in the PRT or Protectorate had any notion of what had been going on would be a black mark on the Wards program for decades. If things really spiraled out of control Piggot could have her Wards being pulled off the streets, which would effectively cut the number of heroes she could field in half. Ward programs all over the country could very well come under review for this, and that wasn't even bringing into account the bullying campaign that every news outlet seemed to be blasting out.

Piggot sighed, pushing that out of her head for now. While certainly concerning, there were more important issues to deal with. "Do we have any idea on who did this to her?"

Both Colin and Hannah exchanged looks that did little to ease the tension that she felt churning in her gut.

"We don't know," they said simultaneously.

Because of course, it wouldn't be that easy.

"The Empire are the most likely suspects," Hannah said, her lips twitching somewhat to sneer at the aforementioned Nazis.

"I agree, but this is outside of their normal operation procedure," Colin added. "Kaiser wouldn't risk the wrath of the Protectorate over something like this. Not to mention if it really had been the Empire then they would have already claimed responsibility by this point."

Piggot had to agree, as much as it pained her to admit it, the Nazis were probably innocent in this.

"This aggressive behavior doesn't fit in with any of the other gangs, and if it was supposed to be a frame up it's a very poorly executed one at that," Hannah said, earning a slight nod in agreement from Colin.

"There is one individual who could fit the profile- Boogeyman," Colin said. Piggot frowned as she contemplated the Tinker's words. It certainly made sense when she considered it. The new parahuman clearly had a pretty big chip on her shoulder in regards to the Protectorate if her interaction with Velocity had been anything to go by and had certainly demonstrated violent behavioral tendencies with her dismantlement of the Merchants. If she thought that Sophia was breaking the law by torturing civilians for her amusement, then she could have very well viewed her actions as some sort of retribution. It hardly made what she did right, but it would certainly give the situation some much need perspective.

That said, if it was Boogeyman then it couldn't have happened at the worst possible time. Boogeyman's brutal dismantlement of the Merchants had been circulating on the PHO boards for the past few days and had grown and not so insignificant following from those that lived near the former Merchant territory. The was a good amount of fear mixed in with that support, but as a whole, a lot of people believed that what she had done had benefited the neighborhoods greatly. There was quite a few post talking about how she needed to be Birdcaged or killed, but that happened with almost every new cape in this city, she would have been more concerned if it didn't happen.

If they tried to move against Boogeyman now they could get some serious public backlash, which was not what they needed with a full-blown gang war on the horizon. Whatever the truth on the Shadow Stalker bullying campaign was it wouldn't change that the public's perception of the girl would be tainted for the rest of her tenure. The people who supported Boogeyman's actions with the Merchants would probably be willing to support her if she claimed responsibility for Sophia's condition as well. With the media painting Shadow Stalker to be the next Slaughterhouse 9 recruit, the populace would be all too willing to gobble up the story to throw their support behind their "savior".

Alternatively, if Boogeyman wasn't the one who put Sophia in the hospital then they could alienate a new vigilante with baseless accusations. Officially speaking she was being considered a villain for the murders she had committed, but unofficially the PRT were going let her slide for the time being to try and take a chunk out of the bigger gangs. She was certainly a destabilizer that Piggot didn't want in her city, but the situation had already been destabilized with the death of the Merchants. At this point, the best thing to do would be to let Boogeyman continue to operate and draw the gang's attention so the Protectorate could get some real damage in, and at best if they managed to capture her then it would give them even more negotiating power to try and force a deal of some sort.

"Has Shadow Stalker woken up?" Piggot asked. At this point, all of this was conjecture and theory. Until they found proof that Boogeyman was responsible for the attack on her Ward then they were going to have to wait to take any action.

Colin shook his head. "Doctor Jones is keeping her under sedation or the time being. She also demanded that Sophia remains in the hospital for the next 72 hours under suicide watch given her previous…attempt."

A stark and tense silence filled the room. Piggot watched as Hannah's green projection flashed through an assortment of weapons before resting on a large machete. In any other circumstance, she might have reprimanded the woman for creating such a large weapon in her office, but at his point, she was willing to let it slide. She knew Hannah's history and how the brutalization of children hit her right at home. Taking away her coping mechanism would be a petty cruelty that would serve her no real purpose.

"…what are we going to do?" Hannah asked as the silence carried on. Piggot could tell that the woman was more than ready to march down to her motorcycle and hunt down the one who had done this to Sophia if she gave the go ahead. Honestly, Piggot couldn't blame her, but this wasn't the time for such single-minded actions. Not when the whole city, and likely the whole nation, was watching them with a calculating eye.

Piggot sighed heavily. She could feel her shoulders slump in an uncharacteristically weary manner as she considered the Blaster's question. "For now, nothing." She raised her hand to silence the half-formed protests on the lips of the heroes' mouths. "Until we know _exactly_ what happened, any response could very well be our undoing. So, unless one of you can provide me proof of the perpetrator's identity then…"

Piggot trailed off as the door to her office slid open as her Deputy Director Renick stepped through, his normally tan face ashen and colorless.

"How bad?" Piggot asked. She had sent him after the local news companies to try and find out what exactly was going on and who sent the videos. She had also told him to keep it quiet, if the public thought they were trying to suppress information then they would turn on them faster than a pack of rabid weasels, regardless of the information's authenticity.

"Bad," he said, which was enough to make Piggot's stomach churn. Renick wasn't one to exaggerate things, and he was a good judge of character. If he thought that the situation was bad, then it was _bad._ Renick held out his hand with a single flash drive to give to her.

"How much did they have?" Piggot asked as she took the nondescript looking flash drive from her subordinate. That was the question that had been burning in the back of her mind since the news report came out. She had no idea how much information the media had. They hadn't revealed Shadow Stalker's identity yet, the threat of legal action was more than enough to keep the more legitimate news outlets in line, but that would mean little for some of the shadier journalists looking to make a quick buck. And in the end, it would only be a matter of time before the more legitimate news outlets started to put possible publicity ratings on the classified information as they considered letting it loose, laws be damned. She trusted Renick and his men to do their jobs, but each station probably already had made multiple copies of the information, and it would be almost impossible to confiscate them all. At this juncture, all they could do was find out exactly what was out there and what they could do to lessen the impact.

"Enough," Renick said, his face etched with concern as she plugged the flash drive into her computer. The screen flashed as it scanned the contents of the drive for any malware looking to worm its way into the system. Finding none, Piggot opened the file and clicked on the first document at the top of a very long list. The document in question turned out to be a video as her player opened on its own accord.

As the video started Piggot tried to make out where exactly it was being filmed, but the background was too dark for her to make anything out other than a couple of run-down looking buildings that could have been anywhere in the Bay. She managed not to flinch as a young woman's face filled the screen with a wide unsettling grin. Her off yellow eyes seemed to glare into the camera, as if she personally despised whoever was watching the video. Her pitch-black hair ran down her shoulders and became almost indistinguishable from her dark robes. Her bone structure seemed to brush up against the uncanny valley, not quite unsettling, but not nearly normal enough.

"Hellooooo Brockton Bay," she said with an upbeat tone that was completely at odds with the vicious looking grin she was giving the camera. Piggot held back a shiver at the unsettling glint in her eyes, a glint that she looked far too young to have.

"I suppose you could consider this my manifesto if you will." The girl paused and turned to someone off screen and asked, "Manifesto, right? That's what they're called?" There was an equine sounding snort from off screen that made the young woman shrug helplessly before saying, "Whatever, the point is that I'm telling the world what I'm going to do."

The woman's unnerving smile suddenly melted away, leaving nothing behind but a single stern line that somehow made her appearance even more unsettling than her smile.

"The. Gangs. Are. Done."

"As of this moment, every gang is a dead man walking. The time of the PRT and Protectorate throwing the city to the mercy of the gangs is over, because when I'm done there won't be any more gangs," she said with a completely straight face as if she hadn't just declared war on two of the most powerful organizations in the city. "What happened to the Merchants will happen to them. I don't care if they're hiding behind a newt whose only real achievement was to _lose_ to Leviathan, or if they're working for a group of broken people who hide their inadequacies by taking their frustrations out on those they deem as lesser, I will end them."

"Now I know what you're all saying," she said with a heavy sigh. "'But Boogeyman, what you did was brutal and people died'. Yes, people did die, but I'm done playing games." Her lips curled into an angry snarl that revealed her off-color fangs that seemed to glint in what little lighting there was. "I am not soft or safe. I'm not going to coddle the criminals of this city just because they're wearing spandex like the Protectorate do. I'm not going let criminals escape because the PRT is too scared to change the status quo. I'm not going to let _their_ fear subdue me, and tonight I'm going to prove it. Tonight, I'm going to show you all that it doesn't matter who you hide behind. I will get you."

"So, I'm going to let you in on a little secret," Boogeyman said with a faux whisper. "Shadow Stalker is a very naughty little girl. It seems that she's been tormenting her classmates in her civilian identity as Sophia Hess. And I'm not just talking about name calling or anything juvenile like that, though she still does to that. No, I'm talking about shoving a classmate into a locker that's filled with nothing but used feminine products and other garbage and leaving her in there for hours. All for her own amusement."

Piggot could feel what little hope that this bullying campaign was all one big hoax die in the back of her throat. There was too much hate, too much resentment for this to be anything but genuine. These weren't the words of a woman who was trying to sell some grand deception, but of one who had finally had the last straw, someone who wanted to lash out at the world and everything in it. She had felt that rage before at Ellisburg when she had watched her comrades and friends being torn apart by monsters while the "heroes" ran away like scared little children.

"Some of you are probably getting pretty upset right now," Boogeyman said with a small humorless smile. "I know I was, but that's not what really gets my blood boiling. Do you want to know what really gets me? The school, Winslow, did absolutely nothing to stop her. In fact, they pretty much ignored what she was doing because it was easier for them than having to take care of a girl that nobody cared about. Her PRT handler covered up what was going on at the school because it was too much effort for her to actually do her _job._ And doesn't that really demonstrate the way the city works? So long as you're powerful, nobody will stop what you're doing, and if you're weak and useless nobody will give a damn about you." Boogeyman's face was twisted into a rictus of anger as she stared into the camera lens. It gave Piggot an up-close view of the absolutely murderous look in the young woman's eyes. It was unnerving to see someone who was this young to have that much hatred in their life, to know that she was more than willing to commit murder to achieve her goals.

 _What the hell did Hess do?_

There was far too much hatred for this to be anything but personal. This wasn't some random girl who was angry at a nebulous enemy that she had never actually met. She had focus, drive, she knew exactly who she was targeting any why.

"So tonight, my Nightmares and I are going to show her what it's like to be on the other side of the fence for once," she said with a wide bloodthirsty smile. "And you're all going to watch. Because this is what will happen to the those of you who work for the gangs or perpetuate the suffering of the innocent for your own amusement. I will find you, and I will _break you_."

The last words were spoken with such vitriolic anger that Piggot couldn't help but flinch reflexively. Hannah's weapon flashed through a variety of forms, her power betraying her neutral poker face as she listened in. Even the normally in control Colin clenched his teeth as the young woman spoke. Renick looked even paler than he had when he'd walked in. A shade or two more and he might have been able to substitute for Alabaster.

"Well, that's all I wanted to say on that matter," Boogeyman said with a smile. The attitude flip was so jarring it was disturbing in and of itself. If it wasn't an act then it could very well hint at some instability in the young parahuman's mind, which wouldn't bode well for the future of the city. "So, sit back relax and enjoy the show. I know I will."

The video feed cut off into static for a brief moment before reforming an image of Shadow Stalker staring down Boogeyman with her crossbow aimed directly at her. Piggot paused the video, there was no point in watching the whole video herself, she could let her techies deal with that and send her the important bits.

Still, that little intro painted a very bleak picture of what was going on. She allowed herself a cursory scan of the other documents in the file. Some looked like a multitude of emails, copies of text and far more incriminating evidence than one would expect from a hoax. She would let her investigators determine if this was all legitimate or not, but for the time being she was going to assume that this was all real and not some hoax perpetrated by Boogeyman for some publicity.

Which meant that she had a huge headache to deal with.

"Colin, Hannah," she said, bringing the two capes' focus back on her. "Brief the others on the situation. As of this moment, I'm going to place an arrest warrant out on Boogeyman, but hold off on trying to track her down until we understand what we're dealing with." The two capes gave her varying signs of agreement, a grunt from Colin and a nod from Hannah.

"Renick," Piggot said as the two capes left her office space. The man flinched somewhat at the harsh tone that just dripped with barely suppressed anger, but he nodded. "Get Agent Smith down here now. I want to know what the _**hell**_ is going on."

* * *

If there was one word that could describe Jessica Smith it was average. Everything about her just screamed plain or uninteresting. Her entire appearance was one that had no real highlights, no attention grabbers to make her stand out from the crowd. Her plain mousy hair was pulled back into a loose bun that she clearly didn't put much effort into, her eyes were a dull unappealing brown. She was someone who would go unnoticed by everyone. Most people probably would have tried to change their appearance or personality to become more attention grabbing, but for Ms. Smith, she appeared to enjoy the anonymity that came with her average appearance.

Piggot really didn't care about her employee's appearances so long as they did their jobs. The fact that she had to work with people who dressed up in fancy Halloween costumes was a testament to this fact. What she did care about was when her employees didn't do their jobs.

"So, tell me Ms. Smith, why you didn't bother to report what Shadow Stalker has apparently been using her free time to do," Piggot said in a tone that brooked no disobedience. She pinned the young agent with a heavy glare that only made her shrink in on herself even more. The woman's skin was almost bone white as the full realization of how much trouble she was in came crashing down on her.

"Well,half formed…you see…I didn't," she trihalf-formedexcuses and explanations falling from her lips like a waterfall.

 _"Ms. Smith,_ " Piggot growled out, her already finite patience wearing thin from the woman's hemming and hawing. Piggot didn't have the time to get to know every single one of her employees and the few times that she had met Sophia's handler she seemed like a quiet but hardworking woman. Only now could she see that it had all be an act. Records that Renick had pulled revealed that Ms. Smith only did the bare bones of her paperwork, if that, and regularly spent her time at her desk reading through news articles instead of doing her job. Phone records had shown that the handler had been making far more frequent calls to Principle Blackwell of Winslow High School than one would expect for a 'well-mannered student' like Sophia Hess.

Ms. Smith jaw clicked shut, her eyes nearly bulging out of her skull in fear at the near blinding anger that seemed to drip off her superior's words.

"I know you haven't been doing your job," Piggot said with an extremely unfriendly shark-like smile that made the young woman flinch. "I know that you've been apparently covering for Shadow Stalker's transgressions ever since you've been assigned to her. I know that in doing so you've opened the PRT to more bad press than I can ever remember, and have apparently caused a young girl to trigger." Piggot paused and raised herself from her seat. She leaned over her desk, pinning the young agent with a very stern glare. "What I want to know is _why._ "

"They- they're just kids," the stricken agent murmured so quietly that Piggot could barely hear her.

Piggot could feel a sneer forming on her lips as she sat back down. "I'm so angry because that they are 'just kids'. Do you understand the magnitude of your screw-up? Because of your actions, we didn't know that Shadow Stalker was being brutally attacked for eight hours. Because of you we didn't know that Shadow Stalker took part in the disappearance of a student. Because of _you_ a young woman triggered and has now committed multiple accounts of murder and assault with a parahuman power."

Honestly, she didn't care that much about the Merchant's deaths. They were scum of the earth that she had been forced to live with in her city to prevent an all-out gang war from sparking. She wouldn't lose any sleep over their deaths, but that didn't mean that Boogeyman was going to get a free pass. But what angered her the most was the overwhelming stupidity of Ms. Smith and the fact that something of this magnitude had been hiding under her nose for the past six months.

"Do you understand that one of our Wards could have been in danger at Winslow and we would have never known because you were too lazy to do your _**job**_ ," Piggot snarled. The young agent said nothing, only swallowing in fear as the director's furious gaze bored into her. Piggot took a deep breath to calm herself down and prevent herself from crawling over the table and strangling the young agent.

"Internal Affairs is going through your files with a fine-toothed comb as we speak," Piggot informed her. "If we had managed to keep this in-house then you might have had the chance of simply being assigned to a Simurgh Containment Zone for the rest of your career with half pay. As it is, because of the public nature of this PR catastrophe we'll be using you as a scapegoat. You'll most likely go to prison for the rest of your natural life."

Jessica Smith slumped in her seat with a stricken expression as Piggot explained her future. Piggot had to sigh as tear started to form in the corners of the woman's eyes. "That said," the PRT Director managed to keep herself from smiling with dark amusement as the woman's head shot up like a meerkat's, eager to hear what her boss had to say. "We'll also be bringing the Winslow administration up on charges, if you give them up we might be able to downplay your involvement in the cover up."

"…but I'll still go to prison," she said with a small voice.

"Most likely," Piggot replied without a trace of pity. This woman's idiocy had brought this on herself, she wouldn't get a tear from her. "But it might be the difference between a life in prison or a few decades."

For a long moment, the young woman said nothing, instead blankly staring at the floor as she twiddled with her thumbs. Piggot sighed and clicked the intercom to her secretary outside who was waiting with two agents to escort Ms. Smith to a cell. "Sarah, please send in-"

"Wait!" Jessica screamed, her expression wide and panicked.

"Hold that," Piggot said, clicking the intercom off. She stared at the agent with a neutral expression. "Well?"

The agent fidgeted for another moment before she spoke, this time her voice quiet and subdued. "Both Abigail Blackwell and I siphoned money from the Wards Program funds that were supposed to go to the school."

Piggot felt her eye twitch at this knowledge. She might have screamed if she hadn't been beyond furious. "I see," she said, her voice as neutral and blank as she could manage given the circumstances. "Is there anything else that I should know?"

The young woman shook her head, looking anywhere but at her superior, her shoulders slumped in apparent guilt. Piggot doubted that the woman felt guilty for her actions, more likely she simply felt sad that she had been caught apparently outright sabotaging the Wards program.

Piggot clicked her intercom on again, and this time Jessica Smith made no move to stop her. "Sarah, send in Jenkins and Campbell to escort Ms. Smith to the holding cells." There was no verbal reply, instead the door to her office simply slid open and two agents armed with a pair of handcuffs and service pistols stepped in to take Smith away.

Piggot rubbed her temples as the soon to be ex-agent was escorted out of her office, the reinforced door closing with a click. One of her Wards down for the count and possibly on her way to juvie and a good chunk of her time and energy would be forced to deal with the impending PR crisis instead of trying to capitalize on the gangs' weaknesses. It meant that the Protectorate heroes would have to spend valuable time patrolling the city to make it look like they were doing instead of actually taking the fight to the gangs. She would have to deal with a possible investigation from the higher ups which could lead to having her entire hero roster benched.

All because one woman couldn't be bothered to do her job.

Piggot sighed. Whining about what was happening wouldn't do her any good. At the very least she could use the possible internal investigation as a cover to purge out any spies and moles that had wormed their way into her ranks.

 _This is going to be a long week,_ Piggot groused as she started to mentally browse through the list of PRT agents she knew she could trust without reservation for such an investigation.

It wasn't a very long list.

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	12. Shadow 2-4

**Enjoy!**

Shadow 2.4

The moment that the bomb Tinker agreed to listen to her Boogeyman knew that this would be one of the most difficult things she would do since she had gotten her powers. Because the truth of the matter was that she still didn't know how to talk with people.

Oh, she could talk _to_ them just fine. She knew exactly what she had to say to get under their skins, to make them uncomfortable to make them feel afraid. She could do that as easily as one might breathe, but to hold an actual back and forth conversation with someone? It was a skill that she hadn't had as much personal experience with for the last two years or so as one her age normally would. Add in her powers which were constantly telling her the deepest darkest fears and terrors of everyone she met, and it was easy to understand why she was so concerned about this conversation.

"What do you want from me?" Jennifer Lin asked. Boogeyman could feel the undercurrent of resentment and anger as the woman asked her question. There was a spark of caution in her gaze as the initial excitement of her offer faded. Her muscles were still tense, ready to spring towards her completed works at a moment's notice. Boogeyman was confident of her ability to stop her, but she would rather not have to end this conversation with someone curling up into the fetal position.

"I just don't want to see your brilliance wasted on a thug like Lung," Boogeyman said with what she hoped was a calming and friendly smile. Jennifer visibly preened under the praise, straightening up as if she was being put under a spotlight, but there was still a good amount of skepticism and caution. Apparently, her tutelage under Lung's hand had taught her some valuable lessons about paranoia.

Embolden by the primary positive reaction Boogeyman pushed on. "I mean, look at this place," she said, waving her hands to indicate the run-down warehouse that the bomb Tinker was currently residing in. It wasn't really bad as far as abandoned warehouses went. That wasn't to say it was the Ritz or anything like that, she could still see some mold and rot growing in one of the corners, but it was by far superior to anything the Merchants had used. "A woman of your talent being forced to work in conditions like this, and for a man who can't truly appreciate what you're capable of? A man who can't recognize your true intelligence."

She could taste Jennifer's fear of being unknown, unrecognized, of being anything less than spectacular. It was a fear that had scarred her soul and actions, a fear that had broken her once. It was tangy and sweet and it was oh so tempting to dive in, to drive the spike in even further. The young woman before her was on the edge of the abyss, ready to take the first step off after being ignored by Lung for so long.

"Is this really how you want to live for the rest of your life?" Boogeyman asked as she pushed back her urge to break the young woman before her. It was more difficult than she wanted to admit. "To be denied your accomplishments, to live in poverty and fear under a monster's wrath?"

"No."

"I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you," Boogeyman said as she cupped her ear. A lie, she could hear Jennifer's denial just fine, but she needed the woman to admit her situation as provide her with an alternative. After all, the first step in solving any problem was to recognize that it existed. Something that the PRT and Protectorate seemed to be incapable of. The woman before her had been in denial of what she had been forced to become, allowing herself to reason that she could still become what she dreamed to be if she just kept her head down and listened to Lung. It was a lie she had told herself so much that she almost believed it.

"No," Jennifer shouted, her anger temporarily overcoming her caution. Boogeyman could see behind her visor her eyes had narrowed into slits of pure rage and resentment at her entire situation. "I don't want to have to work in this- this sweat shop!"

Boogeyman had to hold back a smile at the desperation coloring her words. While the media hadn't revealed anything about Cornell Bomber's identity to the public, one didn't get into that college lightly. The fact that she had been accepted, spoke of someone of intelligence and with a fairly decent background. She could feel the desire to be recognized for her accomplishments, her need to prove anyone that had ever doubted her capabilities wrong. To be forced to slave away like this at the behest of jumped up street thug, without any recognition or care for her services had to be severely out of the woman's comfort zone. Any longer and she was likely to try something... foolish.

Jennifer turned around and slammed her fist onto her worktable, making the entire thing rattle. Boogeyman froze as the sleeping guard twitched, but calmed down as he settled back down into his nap. She had to wonder if he was that stupid to fall asleep in a Tinker's workshop on a job that had to have been assigned by Lung himself.

"I don't want to live like this," Jennifer said with a short sob, the angry tension leaving her shoulders as her sorrow and sadness took hold. Boogeyman could feel the woman's terror as her mind played images of her working like this for the rest of her life. Being forced to make bomb after bomb without care, without consideration, without mercy. The fear that she would just be remembered as another subordinate of Lung, forgotten to all for what she had been before she had become a parahuman.

The fear of never seeing her parents again.

The small part of Taylor Hebert that hadn't quite died yet felt for the woman. Taylor had lost her parents as well, and she knew the pain of being isolated, of being forgotten. She could understand the woman's fear and pain and terror.

She was tempted to place her hand on the woman's shoulder in a comforting gesture but decided against it. She could still feel Jennifer's uneasiness about her, and her recent experiences with physical contact hadn't been that pleasant. Boogeyman could see the barest edge of what looked to be a pretty nasty burn scar poking out from under the woman's sleeve. She could feel the Tinker's desire to be free from her imprisonment, but at the same time, she was scared witless by Lung.

"You don't have to fear him," Boogeyman said. It was somewhat ironic that she, someone whose existence was literally sustained by fear, was telling someone that they didn't have to be afraid.

"Of course, I do," Jennifer retorted with a hiss as she grabbed her hair in her hands as if she was going to tear them out by the roots. "You think you can take him?" she asked, turning around to look Boogeyman in her off yellow eyes. "Lung isn't a man, he's a monster wearing a human suit. What are you going to do, hide under his bed? Monsters don't feel fear."

Boogeyman tried to ignore her irritation of Jennifer's dismissal of her abilities as she gave the young woman a smile that made her flinch. "Monsters do feel fear, Jennifer." Boogeyman leaned in until her lips were inches away from the woman's ears. She whispered to the Tinker so quietly the woman had to strain her hearing just to make out the words.

"That's why they're monsters."

"I can help you," Boogeyman said as she tried to keep a smirk off her face as Jennifer released a full body shiver at her whisper. "I can make sure that people recognize who you are, that they know that you're more than just another parahuman. More than just another criminal. You can be more than just Bakuda," Boogeyman said as she glanced to the worn gas mask lying on the table. "You can be Jennifer again."

Boogeyman could feel the desire rolling off the young woman as she continued to tell her about all she could accomplish if she joined her. She could feel the need for her to be recognized, for all her work to be validated. She could feel it all boiling under a pot of fear and anger, almost ready to snap, but not quite there.

"All you need to do is help me, and I can free you from Lung," Boogeyman said with a smile as she stretched out her palm for Jennifer to take. She could feel her elation rise as the young woman started to hesitantly move her own hand to accept the offer. That elation dried up as quickly as snow in the Sahara as the woman brought her hand back towards her chest and took a cautious step back.

"Cut the crap," Jennifer growled, her coal black eyes narrowing behind the visor of her welding mask. Though she couldn't see her face Boogeyman could tell the woman's expression had morphed into a vicious looking sneer. She could feel the anger bubbling off every word as hands clenched into trembling fists. The rage that had been held in check by her fear of Lung had risen to the surface, memories of such offers from the past coming back in full force.

Boogeyman could feel the victory that she had held so close slipping through her fingers. The budding trust and confidence that she had been building up melted away like rainwater as Jennifer took a cautious step back from her. Boogeyman managed to keep her irritation from showing as she tried to placate the angry Tinker. "I want to help you, Jennifer. I want to-"

Jennifer cut her off with an angry snarl. Her entire form was shaking with barely contained rage as she spat out, "No, you want me to help you. You want to use me like Lung did!"

While Boogeyman wanted to argue that she was wrong, that she misunderstood her intentions, the woman wasn't exactly wrong per se. She did want the Tinker's capabilities to try and help in her crusade, but at the same time, she wanted to obtain her services in such a way that would be beneficial to Jennifer. But she could feel the woman's resentment at her offer, at the implication that she couldn't accomplish what Boogeyman was offering on her own. The weight of countless dismissals and denials of her capabilities rested on her shoulders.

"Jennifer, I just want to hel-" Boogeyman started to say in a placating manner to calm the angry young woman down. She took a step back and held her palms out in a non-threatening manner, but the bomb Tinker seemed to care for none of it.

"I don't need you," she hissed. The anger and fear that had been slowly and steadily boiling had finally snapped, but not in the direction that Boogeyman had wanted. Instead, it was now a frothing mess as the Tinker's rage toward her situation encompassed not only Lung and the ABB, but Boogeyman as well. Instead of being seen as a bringer of freedom she was now just another slave driver like Lung, interested only in using her abilities to their advantage.

"You're right," Boogeyman agreed, desperately clutching to the last chance she had to get the woman on her side. "You don't need me, but I want to help yo-"

"I don't want your help," Jennifer spat with enough force to make the snoozing guard stir in his sleep. For a moment, Boogeyman feared he would wake from his disgustingly peaceful dream, but he settled back down a few seconds later. "I don't need help from a _nothing_ like you," Jennifer said caustically.

Boogeyman growled back, her own irritation finally reaching the breaking point. "I'm a nothing?" Boogeyman asked sarcastically, giving the woman a bone-chilling laugh. "You're more of a nothing that I'll ever be. Because no matter what you do it's not going to be Jennifer Lin they recognize or respect, it's going to be Bakuda."

The bomb Tinker flinched behind her visor even as her skin started to turn red with rage. Even though her face was masked by her welding visor Boogeyman could tell she was about to interject with her own commentary and cut her off. "You will never be more than you are now Bakuda. You will always be remembered as nothing more than a slave of Lung, a convenient tool that he found. Nobody will remember who you were before this or even care if you told them."

The part of Boogeyman's mind that wasn't focused on trying to break Jennifer was screaming at her to stop. She had come her to try and make friends with the imprisoned Tinker, not terrorize her. And yet, despite being her original plan, Boogeyman couldn't help but revel in the frightened, wide-eyed gaze of the Tinker as she was slowly forced back. She could feel the sweet fear and terror rolling off the young woman's entire form that was so appetizing to her.

Boogeyman loomed over the shivering woman as she backpedaled into her workbench. "And when you look back on this day, know that you had a chance to be more than just Bakuda. That you had a chance to be Jennifer again, and you let it slip through your fingers because you were too afraid to admit that you couldn't solve the problem on your own," Boogeyman said as the oppressive shadows seemed to draw in closer. She could feel the quick panic breaths from Jennifer as her eyes widened in fear as she towered over the Tinker.

"Because in the end, you weren't smart enough," Boogeyman taunted.

In that instant, several things happened. Jennifer's fear quickly shifted into a pure blinding rage at the insulation that she wasn't intelligent enough to solve her own problems. Her hand reach out behind her and wrapped around her half-finished bomb even as Boogeyman retreated into the shadows with a dark laugh. The unfinished Tinker creation clattered uselessly against the floor as the young woman fell to her knees, slamming her fists against the ground.

"I'll show her," she muttered under her breath, unheard by all but her.

"I'll show them all."

* * *

"ARGGG!" Boogeyman screamed as she slammed her fist into her desk. The force of the blow was so great that the wooden fixture cracked in two and collapsed into an utterly useless pile of splinters on the floor. But Boogeyman was too angry at herself to care about something as banal as a piece of furniture that she had taken from one of the Merchant dens.

She had failed. Jennifer Lin had completely rejected her offer and declared herself as an enemy. Hardly an auspicious outcome for her. But that wasn't what angered her the most. What got her really angry was how close she had been to getting the Tinker to accept her help in dealing with Lung. She had felt the uncertainty and anger that had been swirling around in her brain and how close she had been to taking that one step over the edge.

But then Boogeyman opened her mouth and everything had been shot to hell.

She had pushed too hard, too quickly and paid the price for her eagerness to get the bomb Tinker on her side. What she had hoped to be a comforting and reassuring statement of what she would do for the woman had been interpreted in a less than stellar light.

"I was so close," Boogeyman said, her voice echoing through the nearly empty warehouse. Only a few of her Nightmares, including Phobia, were residing in the building, the others spread out in other abandoned buildings in the former Merchant territory to throw people off her trail. She paced the open room, hands clenched by her sides as she went over the entire conversation in her head, looking for some way that she could salvage the situation.

Unfortunately for her, nothing came to mind. She had scared the Tinker too much with her talk about how she would be forgotten while working under Lung, and now the woman seemed convinced to prove her wrong.

Boogeyman took a seat on her torn up chair with a sigh. It wasn't the most comfortable or prettiest of things, but it served its purpose. The shallow green fabric of the seat was frayed and worn in many places, and almost half of it was covered in stains of some kind. Boogeyman squeezed the armrests of the chair in an effort to calm herself down. She could feel the wiring and internal fabric of the chair give way as her superhumanly strong fingers dug into the piece of furniture.

Well, it wasn't a total loss at the very least. Jennifer had been spurred to rebel against Lung just as she had originally hoped, it just wasn't with her as she had planned. She doubted that Jennifer would be able to do much against Lung by herself, but at the very least it would lead to some internal strife in the ABB. Perhaps there was a way that she could capitalize on it?

If only she was better at talking with people…

As the stray thought passed through her head Boogeyman couldn't help but let out a stark humorless laugh that made her Nightmares shy away in fear. Boogeyman felt a wide smile stretch across her lips. "I guess Sophia did get one last victory after all. I get to spend the rest of my life alone."

It was a sobering thought that bothered Boogeyman more than she would have liked to admit. Spending the rest of her life without any real person to talk to other than creations of her power seemed like a lonely way to live. But…it was an existence she could easily see happening to her. Thanks to Emma and Sophia her last two years of social development had been pretty much stunted by the fact that she hadn't been able to make any friends. They had done their best to make sure that everyone in the school knew that trying to be her friend would be the equivalent of social suicide, leaving her alone and isolated. She didn't even talk to her dad for most of that time with how depressed he had been over her mom's death. And now, with her powers screaming at her the fear and terrors of everyone she met, how could she possibly hope to be able to make a real friendship that wasn't based on fear of her?

 _You don't need them._

Part of wanted to agree wholeheartedly. She had been shown time and time again that friendships brought pain and suffering. Emma had once been her sister in all but blood and now, now she was little more than a manifestation of everything that Boogeyman thought was wrong with Brockton Bay. A pretty white girl with a decently wealthy family, and powerful friends in the form of Shadow Stalker made sure that she got away with everything.

"Let's see how many friend will help you now," Boogeyman muttered under her breath. Sophia Hess had been revealed for what she really was, a broken little girl trying to prove to the world that she was anything but that. Madison Clements, a coward too scared to go against anyone that was stronger than her. She had stripped Emma of the two people in Winslow that were probably her only legitimate friends.

The rest were mere parasites looking to work their way up the school hierarchy. They held no vested emotional attachment to Emma or even the bullying. They had all just gone through the motions so that they weren't going against the crowd. When the police and PRT came, they would turn on Emma so fast they might have all been mistaken for Movers. Emma was about to lose what little fragment were left of her support network, leaving the traumatized girl isolated and alone. Boogeyman felt a strong urge to go over to the Barnes' house right now and start mocking her former best friend for all that she could. She could just imagine it now, Emma's eyes red and blotchy as tears and snot ran down her face whilst she desperately tried to deny what was going on around her.

But no, for now, she would wait until the PRT and police started to investigate Winslow. She couldn't let her eagerness to see Emma as a broken wreck of a human being ruin her revenge. She had waited two years for this, she could wait a few more days.

But even as she thought about how she couldn't wait to see her ex-best friend suffer, she couldn't help but feel a brief pang of longing. Even after being burned so badly, she still wanted to feel that same type of camaraderie with someone besides creatures of her own creation. She could feel that sense of loneliness and desire for companionship resonate with something inside of her as she leaned back against her sickly green chair.

"I don't suppose you have any ideas?" Boogeyman asked as Phobia approached her seat. The Nightmare's only response was to snort with a soft head shake. "I thought not," Boogeyman said with a sigh as she shifted her weight to make herself more comfortable. It wasn't like there was much she could do to help with that, the chair she had stolen from the Merchants was almost certainly older than her and hadn't been taken care of very well.

"Let's see how Sophia's doing," Boogeyman muttered to herself as she picked up the television remote. The T.V. in question was just as old and worn as her chair, having been taken from the same Merchant den. It was a small boxy thing that was thicker than it was wide with two antennae sticking up out of the frame. It didn't provide much in the way of quality, its colors only fulfilled the bare minimum requirements to avoid making the screen look black and white, but it worked.

It took her a moment to get the television to respond to her button pushing, seeing as the remote was just as in as bad a shape as the rest of the equipment she had gotten from the Merchants. After a few frustrated buttons presses, she finally managed to turn the television on and set it to one of the local news outlets.

On the screen, a man with salt and pepper hair stared back behind a half circle desk. Beneath him, the words 'Teenage Tragedy' were plastered on the screen in big obnoxious red letters. She had to snort, that was the best title they could come up with?

"Tragedy struck Winslow High today as it was discovered through leaked documents that the local Ward Shadow Stalker had been abusing her power granted by the Wards Program in order to bully her classmates," the reporter, whose name she didn't know or care about said in a no-nonsense, professional fashion. "Among these victims was the daughter of the now deceased head of the Dockworker's Union, Taylor Herbert."

Boogeyman felt her muscles tense and the chair creak underneath her grip at the mention of her dead father even as they mangled her last name. The news anchor, unaware of the spike he was driving through the teen's heart carried on with his report.

"Sources indicate that this abuse had been going on for some time, culminating in a young teen being locked in her own locker alongside various used women hygiene products and other garbage," the reporter said without so much as a twitch as they displayed an image of the disgusting prison she had been placed into weeks ago. It was a low-quality photo taken from a student's phone, but it did little to detract from the disgusting nature of the so-called "prank".

Boogeyman felt her teeth grinding against each other at the reminder of the hell she had gone through. She would be lying to herself if she didn't admit that the experience had scarred her. She could still remember the noxious stench that assaulted her nose, the sick, oily feeling that covered her flesh as she struggled to free herself. She could still remember the exact moment the two titans had started their dance before they had been consumed by the darkness and shadows.

She could remember all of it.

Boogeyman took a deep breath to calm herself, she couldn't allow herself to fall into the very fear she used to break others. Not after all that she had been through, not after all she had done, not before all she was going to do.

"…PRT and Protectorate have yet to make a statement, but have assured the public they are doing everything in their power to help the situation," the news anchor said, cutting through the haze of thoughts that Boogeyman had found herself trapped in. She had to snort at the man's statement about the PRT trying to help. It was almost comical to think that the PRT would do something that might tarnish their reputation in some way. She didn't doubt that they were doing everything in their power to try and wiggle their way out of the mess that had found themselves in.

Not that they would be able to, she and Madison had collected far too much evidence of Sophia's wrongdoings for them to be able to deny the existence of the bullying. Either the PRT denied what was happening and looked like idiots as they buried their heads in the sand, or they accepted the accusations and took a significant PR hit.

She watched the anchor for a few more minutes before shutting the television off. They weren't bringing up anything she didn't already know herself and would serve her no purpose to dredge up memories better left forgotten. The anchor had mentioned that the police were starting their own investigation of Winslow independent of the PRT's. The thought of Blackwell being dragged off in a set of handcuffs did bring a smile to her lips. Maybe she should visit the lackluster principle one last time. It was enough to take the edge of the frustration from not seeing her message to the city being played on the news just yet.

She supposed that made sense since it revealed Sophia's identity as Shadow Stalker and the PRT would do everything in their power to try and suppress such information, but all that did was make it all the more frustrating. She had tried posting the message on PHO under her old account, but it had been quickly removed by Tin_Mother and other moderators once it became clear what the message was about and the identity that it revealed. Not that it mattered in the long run, eventually her message to the gangs would get out. She had sent it to every news outlet in the city, eventually, one of them would cave in and post it if only to increase their ratings.

Her musings were interrupted as a Nightmare burst out from a shadow with a hurried but deliberate pace.

"What is it?" Boogeyman asked, no longer slouching in her seat, but standing upright and at attention. The Nightmare neighed, pushing an image onto her mind. In the image, Boogeyman saw that the Nightmare in question was one of the ones she had sent to keep an eye on Sophia's family. While she did hold some bitter feelings towards Sophia's mom for not keeping her daughter in check, she didn't want to see her life end at the hand of the scumbag Nazis who would no doubt want to make a lesson of her and Sophia's little brother.

"What's going on?" Boogeyman asked as she called her power to focus and prepared to make the jump to Sophia's apartment complex. The Nightmare snorted again, pushing another image into her mind. This time Boogeyman got a good view of a rather large group of Empire goons making their way the building. She growled, a wave of irritation washing over her. If this had happened a couple hours earlier then she would have just jumped in and torn the group to shreds. Now because the Sun had risen over the horizon and was casting the city with its blinding, burning light she was going to have to get creative.

"Come on," she said to the few Nightmares that were stationed alongside her as she dived into a shadow. "We have work to do."

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	13. Shadow 2-b

**Enjoy!**

Shadow 2.b

Gallant was suffocating.

 _Dean Stansfield_ was suffocating.

The miasma of negative emotions that had flooded the Ward common room was almost enough to make his head spin. Dean honestly couldn't name a single member of the team that wasn't somehow affected by the story being blasted out on the news channels.

A mere hour ago they had been united, they had been a team. When Miss Militia informed them that Shadow Stalker had been attacked and hospitalized they had been ready to head out and hunt down the villain who thought they could get away with mauling a Ward by themselves. Not that the Protectorate or PRT were going to let the Wards go anywhere near the cape that had done this to Sophia.

Sophia Hess had never really been a teammate. She was a team member out of legal necessity, but certainly not by choice. She had been a rolling ball of anger and resentment and made very little if any effort to integrate herself into the team. She was loud, rude, insulting and disrespectful in almost every way imaginable, but she had still been a Ward. She had still been a hero, even despite her apparent brutality prior to joining the program.

So Dean tried to bridge the gap, to use his power to try and get to know the person behind the walls of anger that she had placed around herself. But he had always been sure to back off when he felt he had been pushing too hard. Now he wondered if he should have pushed harder.

Dean supposed the news that Sophia had been bullying her classmates hadn't been all too surprising. She had always taken potshots at her teammates, particularly Missy, but Carlos and he had always stepped in before it could get out of hand. And while Carlos had always taken the responsibility of reprimanding Sophia, Dean would comfort Missy and tell her that Sophia didn't really mean what she was saying and that she just needed to be patience to get through to the angry girl. He had thought he had been helping her at the time, but now that he knew the truth, had all he been doing was enabling her?

To see that she had been actively engaging and leading what surely amounted to psychological torture Dean couldn't help but feel sick. He had seen gang members cause less pain and damage than what Sophia had been doing. What was worse was that no matter what Carlos or the Protectorate members said, he couldn't help but feel responsible for what she had done. Sophia's resentment and anger had always weighed heavily on him whenever they were in the same room and he had tried to help her deal with it once, to find an outlet for her negative emotions. She had rebuffed him at the time, claiming that she already had a well-tested outlet that she had been using and had faith in. There had been a flashing of something that warped its way into her anger that he didn't make out, but it had been so fast and fleeting that he assumed that it had been his imagination.

He had been somewhat concerned at the time, but Sophia had been new to the team and he didn't want her to feel as if they weren't trusting her, so he let it go. He kept what she told him to himself and assumed that Sophia would come to them if she really needed help. When she never came, he assumed that whatever coping mechanism she had was working and he never brought the subject up again.

"Some hero I am," he muttered under his breath, too low for any of his teammates to hear. Intellectually he knew that he wasn't entirely responsible for Sophia's actions. A great deal of blame rested on the PRT handler and the school, but that didn't lessen his burden. The fact was that if he had just pushed Sophia a little harder they might have been able to avoid this situation entirely.

His helmet rested to the side, unused and unattended. The knight-like facade had been a request on his part. He had always wanted to be a knight like those in the fairy tales, rescuing the princesses and people from the monsters at the doorstep. Whenever he became Gallant he felt as if he was accomplishing that goal, protecting the people from those who would wish them harm for their own selfish desires. He was a hero.

Now the helmet stared at him as if it were mocking him and his efforts. As if it had known this entire time that they had let a villain into their midst. Dean could feel another wave of guilt overcome him, and for the life of him he couldn't figure out if it was his or someone else's.

"Turn it off," Dennis muttered as the television blared out another report of Shadow Stalker's bullying campaign. The redhead was a twisting, churning bowl of anger and self-loathing as he glared at the screen as if he could somehow change what was happening through his willpower alone. Dean had always known that Dennis wasn't nearly the happy jokester he liked to portray himself as but to see him in such a state was more than a little unnerving.

Missy wordlessly clicked the button, shutting the reporter off midsentence. The young Shaker was absolutely livid, and even knowing where all that anger was being directed at, Dean still couldn't help but feel concerned for her. Space around her twisted and bent in small pockets no bigger than a golf ball as she used her powers to vent off some of her rage.

Chris hadn't even bothered to look up from whatever he was working on as he screwed in a bolt with more force than he really needed to. Dean knew that Chris never liked to talk about his school experience before he had triggered, but Dean had heard and pieced together enough to understand that being bullied over his dyscalculia had been a pretty big part of his trigger event. To see that once his teammates had been committing the very act that made him what he was had to be hitting it pretty close to home for him. Dean made a mental note to try and talk to Chris later to see if he could help stem some of that growing anger.

Carlos was still in a meeting with the Director and Armsmaster as they tried to figure out how to deal with the situation, but even without seeing him Dean knew that his leader would be tearing himself up on the inside. He always tried to be the best leader that he could, but something like this was going to shake his trust in himself. He might even request to step down from his leadership position if he thought that it might help the group.

Dean hoped that he would be able to talk some sense into Carlos and calm him down a bit before he decided to do anything rash. He knew that there was no way that Carlos could have known about Sophia's actions. Really, there was no way any of them could have known about what Sophia had been doing in her free time. With the exception of Missy who was still in middle school, everyone else that was on the Wards team went to Arcadia High. Outside of the occasional Ward event none of them had ever been to Winslow.

To them, Winslow had always been that place on the edge of the map, shrouded in mystery. They had always heard the rumors that the school was nothing more than a recruiting ground for the gangs and that half the teachers were on drugs, but Dean had always taken those rumors with a grain of salt. He had never thought that it would have been possible for a teacher, someone who was supposed to nurture and care for the next generation, to allow their place of work to fall so far. He had never seen any outright gang conflicts when they did Ward events at the school, and while it certainly looked far worse for wear than Arcadia it didn't look all that bad.

Now he wondered how much of that had been an effort on the faculties' part to mask how far their school had fallen.

Dean was broken out of his thoughts as a new emotional signature entered his range mere seconds before the door to the Ward's common room slide open to reveal Miss Militia. He could feel her anger and frustration at everything that was going on just as clearly as his teammates, but the elder heroine's was focused, controlled. Her bandanna was down, revealing a heavy frown marring her features. A huge glowing green blade was strapped to her back. Her power seemed to flicker every few seconds as if it wanted to change forms, the only real outside indication to the internal turmoil she was attempting to hide.

"Miss Militia," Dean said, sitting up a little straighter in response to his superior's presence. He could feel his fellow Wards sit up a little taller as well as varying degrees of surprise flowed through him. He managed to avoid twitching as a dark undercurrent of anger and resentment flowed out through Chris' aura. He did his best to keep his face from showing any signs of discomfort at the Tinker leaned back in his seat with a dark look on his face. "What's going on?"

Miss Militia rubbed her eyes and for a moment Dean wanted to ask her if she had gotten enough sleep. He supposed it said something about this whole mess that he had forgotten that she didn't need to sleep. She sighed tiredly, as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders, "As of this moment we're still trying to figure things out."

"Is it true?" Chris asked harshly, his angry voice cutting through the room. Dean turned to give his fellow Ward a motion to back down, but either Chris didn't notice it or simply didn't care to stop. Dean sincerely hoped that it was the former. They didn't need another internal conflict while all of this was going on.

He could feel Miss Militia hesitate as a mixture of anger and regret flowed through her, though her expression betrayed none of that. "While we're still trying to get all the facts into place, it does look like what the media is saying is true."

Dean flinched as another wave of anger and betrayal washed over the room like a tidal wave of negativity. He was sure he saw Miss Militia's eyes flicker towards him for a moment in concern, but he tried to keep his expression neutral. What was his suffering compared to the victims of Sophia?

"So, what's going to happen?" Missy asked in a quiet, subdued tone. The young Shaker had curled in on herself in a defensive posture and looked small and childlike, a far cry from the competent hero that Dean had known all these years.

"At this point, we're not entirely sure," Miss Militia said in a comforting tone as she tried to sooth the angry mess of emotions that the team had become. "We're going to do our best to try and sort this out, but we'll all need a bit of patience."

Dean nodded slightly. He honestly couldn't begin to imagine what the Protectorate and PRT leadership were going through right now. Not only had one of their Wards been traumatized to the point that she was contemplating suicide if whispers from the PRT grapevine were true, and then on top of that they discovered that she had been flaunting her probation under their noses for months with them none the wiser. And to add even more insult to injury everything had been revealed to the public in what was likely the worst way possible. The PR department was running around like headless chickens as they tried to do damage control, but even a fool could see that it was a futile effort. All of it orchestrated by one new cape.

Boogeyman.

Dean wasn't sure where he stood on the new parahuman. One hand he found the dismantlement of the Merchants to be a commendable victory on her part, yet the sheer brutality and viciousness with which she had done so left his gut churning in disgust. No hero should have the right to decide who should live and die, and yet despite this he had heard more than a few supportive whispers from his classmates towards her vicious methods.

 _Why?_

It was something he couldn't understand, why would people support her as a hero? She was brutal without cause and killed without mercy and remorse. How could her actions possibly be considered heroic? His opinion of her had only been solidified even more so with what had happened to Sophia. Brutalizing a Ward was something that only a villain would do, an action that only one without care for life or the well-being of others would undertake.

 _Like Sophia did,_ the traitorous voice in the back of his mind whispered. The revelation of what Boogeyman revealed about what Sophia had been doing had shaken his certainty in what she was to him. Shaken, but not broken. She was still a villain, there was no doubt about that in his mind, but he supposed that didn't mean she couldn't do occasionally heroic deeds. Though such actions would always be tainted by the brutality and viciousness she had demonstrated, and as such she could never be considered a true hero.

"That's it!?"

Dean winced at the harsh grating tone of Chris' voice as he finally rose from his seat, fists clenched in anger and rage. Dean didn't even have to use his powers to know that his teammate was angry beyond belief.

The Tinker's face was twisted into an angry snarl that was so unlike the friendly boy that Dean knew. "Sophia does this…this _shit_ and you just tell us that we have to wait? What about the people that have suffered because of her, will they have to wait too?" Chris asked caustically. Dean couldn't help but reel at his teammate's angry words as his aura churned with rage. Apparently, this entire bullying situation was hitting a little too close to home for Chris.

Miss Militia gave the Ward a compassionate frown as she held her hands out in a placating manner. "Chris," she said in a gentle but firm tone, "Once we investigate and have all the facts I promise to you that every single one of Sophia's victims will receive justice. But I need you to stay calm. As much as you don't like it Sophia Hess is still considered a Ward and entitled to the protection that comes with it."

Dean could feel Chris' anger abate somewhat as he gave the Blaster a sharp look before sitting back down with a grunt. He didn't make eye contact with anyone, instead focusing on his half-finished laser pistol in front of him as if none of them existed.

It was days like these that made Dean hate his emotional detection. It was bad enough to see the hurt and anguish made evident on his friend's faces, but to have to constantly see and feel what they were trying to hide from the world weighed heavily on him. He wanted to say something to comfort his friend, but anything that he would say at this point would be nothing more than empty words. He supposed it was ironic really, his power gave him the ability to understand the suffering of others but left him nearly incapable of actually dealing with the issue short of blasting them with happiness.

Miss Militia sighed again. Dean could feel her guilt and frustration at the whole situation welling up behind her friendly mask, desperate for release. "I understand that you're all upset and confused, but right now, charging in gun-ho isn't going to accomplish anything," she said in an effort to calm the rest of the Ward down. Dean winced as another wave of resentment flashed over Chris' aura in response to the elder heroine's words. For a long time, none of the Wards said anything as Miss Militia stood at attention with a hopeful gaze.

"So, what does Piggy want us to do?" Dennis asked hollowly. His attempt to insult the Director with her less than flattering nickname would have usually bought him a few scowls or laughs, but it was an empty joke without any emotion or feeling behind it. Miss Militia looked and felt like she wanted to reprimand the Striker for it, but apparently thought better of it.

"For now, you're all going to stay in the base - at least for the time being," she added hastily at the disbelieving and disgruntled looks from the rest of the Wards. "If Boogeyman is targeting the Wards we need to be prepared."

Dean understood the reasoning behind the Protectorate Blaster's order. If a villain was deliberately targeting Wards then going on patrols would be a very bad idea, but it did little to stem his own irritation. He wanted to go out there and help, to try and mend the damage that Sophia had caused and to show the city that not all of the Wards were like her.

"Why? It's not like any of us are psychopaths," Chris spat out, not even bothering to look up from his creation as he fiddled with a pair of wires. Dean frowned. While he understood that Chris was angry, that didn't mean that he had to take his anger out on Miss Militia. He could tell she was just as upset and frustrated by this whole situation as they were, maybe even more so.

"Chris," Miss Militia said in a soft, chiding voice, "Even if Boogeyman released this information with the best of intentions, the fact still remains that she traumatized a Ward and broke several laws regarding cape identifies at the same time. We're waiting on Thinker confirmation of her threat level, but we have no idea what the limits of her capabilities are or what her plans are. For all we know she could hold the rest of the Wards and Protectorate accountable for Sophia's actions and decide to target you as well.

Therefore, we're going to request that your family members come into protective custody for the time being, at least until we ensure that your own identities haven't been compromised," the Protectorate hero said. Dean could feel the sudden spike of fear in his teammate's auras at the thought of having their family targeted. Missy was concerned, but it was far more subdued than the others. Dean knew that she had an estranged relationship with her parents at best. Dennis did his best not to show it, but he was panicking underneath his cool façade. Chris was concerned as well, but it was still tinged with his anger.

"You don't think that she's going to go after them, do you?" Dennis asked in an obvious effort to maintain a calm expression. It didn't fool Dean who could feel his worry building to a crescendo.

"Personally, I don't think that Boogeyman is going to go after them. Everything that she has done has been targeted specifically at Shadow Stalker. That said, my feelings on the matter aren't a guarantee of their safety, which is why we are choosing to be cautious and bring them under our protection," Miss Militia explained. Dean could feel and see some of the tension leaving Dennis' shoulders at the Blaster's words, but he still felt very worried about his family members being at risk.

Putting those you cared about in danger was always a concern of being a cape, it was something that had been drilled into Dean's head at a very young age, even before he had triggered. There was always the risk of being unmasked and having those around you targeted by your enemies, but it was something that rarely happened. The Unwritten Rules prevented such things by making the rewards of exposing others identity too risky. Knowing someone's identity wouldn't help with a dozen heroes gunning specifically for you.

The fact that Boogeyman had not only chosen to expose an identity of a hero, but that of a Ward at that meant one of two things. One, she didn't fully understand the consequences of her actions and this was all a misguided attempt to stop Sophia's abuse. Or perhaps the more troubling situation, she did understand what she was doing and just chose not to care.

"With some luck, we'll be able to get this whole thing sorted out quickly and everything will be back to normal," she said in a rather obvious attempt to maintain some level of normalcy. Dean knew that even if this entire thing eventually blew over nothing would ever be the same. The Brockton Bay Wards would always have the shadow of Sophia hanging over their shoulders, a taint on their records. Nobody would ever look at them with the same amount of trust that they had before knowing one of their teammates was a chronic abuser. Once this hit national news then Ward teams all over the country would be looked upon with the same suspicion as them. Hearings, investigations, Dean knew that more than a few governmental agencies would be looking to take a bite out of the PRT's massive budget, even if it meant putting civilians at risk from lack of proper funding. With some luck, the Protectorate might manage to emerge from this crisis unscathed since Piggot had placed the Wards under the PRT's purview instead of the standard practice of having the Protectorate take responsibility of the Wards. Even so, the local heroes would be looked upon with distrust by the local population, wondering if they had dark secrets of their own to hide.

Even on a more personal level, nothing would ever be the same. The Brockton Bay Wards would have to deal with the knowledge that someone they had trusted their lives and identities to had betrayed that trust. Anyone that sought to join this team would be looked upon with suspicion and doubt. The PRT agents that they had trusted with their lives would be kept at an arm's length, as the doubts of their authenticity lingered in the back of their heads.

Judging by the sorrow on her face and in her aura Miss Militia knew exactly what they were thinking. The worst part was there was nothing that she could say that could possibly make the situation any better.

Miss Militia opened her mouth to say something but cut herself off as she brought her hand up to her earpiece with a frown. Dean couldn't hear what was being said on the other end of the line, but whatever it was made Miss Militia's blood drain from her face. He could feel the rolling mixture of fear, panic, and rage as her pale face turned into a stony scowl. Her weapon flickered from her back to her hand, reforming into an extremely large pistol that Dean didn't know the name of.

"What's happening?" Dean asked as the Protectorate Blaster raced towards the door. Miss Militia paused once she reached the door to the common room and turned around.

"Sophia's family is being attacked by the Empire," she said as she pulled her bandana over her grimly set mouth. Dean could feel varying degrees of shock and surprise from his teammates, even Chris, as angry and sullen as he was couldn't help but feel a brief pang of concern for the Hess family.

"We ca-" Dean tried to say, to explain that they were more than ready to help. Even if they didn't like Sophia that didn't mean they were going to stand by and let her family get slaughtered for her crimes. Because that was exactly what the Empire would do if they go their grubby hands on them. While Kaiser didn't usually stoop down to the same level of brutal slaughtering that Allfather had been known for during his time as the Empire's leader, he was more than capable of putting a family to the pike if it served his purpose.

"No," Miss Militia said, cutting off his offer with a tone that brooked no disagreement. Dean felt his face contort into a disgruntled look as he clicked his jaw shut in reluctant agreement. They couldn't afford to have any conflict in the ranks at this point or the media would jump on it like a pack of starving vulture, and that was the last thing that they needed on top of the PR crap that was already happening. Miss Militia gave him a look that conveyed her understanding of his frustration and feeling of helplessness. Nonetheless, she remained resolute in her orders.

"Stay here," she ordered as the door slid shut, cutting the Wards off from the rest of the world.

The cold silence that followed her departure was almost deafening. Dean slouched back into his seat as he stared at the tiled ceiling. This feeling of helplessness grated at him. He hadn't felt this useless since his trigger event, and judging by his friend's auras they felt the same way.

"What are we going to do?" Missy asked. Her face was purposely blank, a mask that she had mastered to hide her true feelings. It saddened Dean that one as young as her was so good at hiding her emotions from the rest of the world, but to him, she might as well have been an open book. Her twisting maelstrom of sorrow and anger was almost sickening for him to look at, it was a strange and unnatural turn from the cheerful kid that she usually was.

"I don't know," Dean said with a helpless sigh. He had no clue how they were going to fix this mess that Sophia had made for them. He had no idea how they were going to stop Boogeyman. He didn't' know how they were going to convince the world they were still heroes.

"I have no _freaking_ idea."

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	14. Shadow 2-5

**Enjoy!**

Shadow 2.5

Boogeyman emerged from the shadows like a vengeful wraith as she set herself down. The old rickety stairs creaked underneath her weight, a testament to the age and the state of disarray of the building. A single half burned out light bulb was the only source of illumination besides a closed shutter to the outside world. Some rays of sunlight managed to squeeze their way through the blinds, but they were too small and weak to be anything of consequence.

She halted her Nightmares in their tracks with a single command, freezing them in place inside the shadow realm. She had no need for them at the moment, and they were more likely to fall through the floorboards if they tried to put their full weight on them.

She had been here once a few weeks ago when she had been ready to rip out Sophia's throat and leave it at that. She had been surprised when she had seen the state of Sophia's apartment complex. While she knew that the cream of society didn't send their kids to Winslow willingly, she had always suspected that Sophia had a much nicer house than her. It was pretty ironic that Sophia had teased her mercilessly for how poor she had been while she had to live in an apartment that was barely big enough for her own family.

Boogeyman supposed that jealousy played a factor in that.

The apartment complex in question was seated just on the edge of the Empire's borders, a rather precarious position for any minority family to be living in. While they wouldn't be subjected to the same torment as those that lived far deeper in the Nazi's territory it still posed a significant risk for them to live here.

 _Beggars can't be choosers I suppose_ , Boogeyman thought with a slight smirk. She had caught a brief glimpse into Mrs. Hess' fears the night she had come here to kill Sophia, and found a woman who was constantly worrying about losing one of her two jobs and being forced to give up her kids because she couldn't provide for them. Boogeyman, for as much as she hated the woman for allowing her daughter's activities to go unchecked, had to feel for the woman's hardship. She had seen firsthand the wear and tear that happened from trying to provide to your family. Her own father had been forced to work double shifts and almost weekly overtime in order to keep themselves and the Union afloat.

Still, understanding the woman's position did little to quench the anger she felt toward her sheer inadequacy as a mother. Honestly, how hard was it to notice that your daughter was a budding sociopath?

The fear and dread that wrapped around the building was almost a physical thing. She could feel the terror rolling from the Hess' room a mere few floors above as helpful news stations informed them just how much of a monster their daughter was. The other occupants of the building fared no better as their own fear coiled and trembled. They all knew what would happen if the Empire came knocking, and white or not they were likely to be labeled "race traitors" for living this close to Sophia and not doing anything.

The stairs under her feet creaked like the screams of a dying woman as she made her way down to the first floor. She paused as she reached the steps that looked down into the lobby below. The room was just as destitute and run down as the rest of the building, even the lock that was supposed to keep the occupants of the building safe was worn down and rusted from years of misuse and disservice. She would be surprised if it even worked.

It was somewhat amusing how little the PRT seemed to care for their Ward and her family. Did they all honesty think that it was impossible for their little "heroes" to be hurt while in their civilian clothing?

Boogeyman was snapped out of her musings by the sound of a group of obnoxiously loud voices echoing from outside.

The Empire had arrived.

The brown shirt, shaved head goons of one of the largest Neo-Nazi groups in the country approached the building with all the subtly of a bull in a china shop. They jostled each other as they tested the door to the building. The frame of the door shook in its hinges, but it surprising held up against their weight.

The door did not hold up against them throwing a rock through the dirty and scratched glass. Boogeyman watched with detached interested as the group shuffled their way through the shattered door, each one being mindful not to cut themselves on the jagged edges. They stopped to mill around in the center of the room while they reoriented themselves, none of them apparently noticing the looming parahuman in the stairwell. They were all armed with makeshift weaponry that varied from baseball bats to crowbars. This wasn't just a pack of stupid kids who didn't fully appreciate the idiocy and evil they were taking part in, these were hardened adults who were ready to commit heinous acts in the name of their twisted philosophy.

"I still don't like this, Ben," one of the younger ones said. His entire form just oozed with nervousness and hesitation to the point that Boogeyman doubted that she would have even needed her powers to recognize the signs. His skin was pale and clammy while his eyes darted around the room nervously. She could feel the second thoughts that he was having about this entire operation and the fear of being locked in a cell for the rest of his natural life.

Boogeyman could feel her lips curling in disgust. If he didn't want to be thrown into prison, then he shouldn't have joined a gang of literal Nazis.

The apparent leader of the group, Ben, snorted back. "You worry too much, Chris. Nobody is going to do anything to us, not with all that crap this kid has done," the man said with a sneer. He was easily the tallest member of the group and had his bare arms covered in various tattoos that were all forms of Nazi imagery and icons. "Now how 'bout we go teach that nigger's family a lesson?"

Most of the group, save the still nervous Chris, broke out into sick grins.

"Is that what you'll do?" Boogeyman asked softly, almost conversationally. She had to hold back an amused grin as the group collectively jumped away from her voice in surprise. "Teach them a lesson?"

"Who the hell are you, bitch?" Ben asked with a snarl as he pulled a snub-nosed pistol from the back of his pants. Despite his angry look, Boogeyman could feel his fear and surprise swirling around on the inside. She had surprised him and shattered his preconceived notion that this entire operation would be a walk in the park. But what was odd was the brief flash of terror of the possibility that she was an Empire cape? Why would a group of Empire thugs be afraid of one of their own capes unless…?

…The Empire didn't know that they were here.

"Someone's been naughty," Boogeyman said in a sing-song voice that sent chills down the spine of more than one of the goons below. "Does your little would-be emperor not know about this?" she asked as she waved her hands to the indicate the building while her mind whirled around the implications of this event.

Kaiser was many things, but short-sighted and foolish were not words that she would use to describe the fascist. Every one of his "public events" were planned out to the highest degree, each one being used at critical points to hone in his gang's message about being "protectors of the white man". While he wasn't above putting the odd civilian or two yo the spike, his victims had always been despised or at the very least uncared for. Nobody was going to swear vengeance for a Jane or John Doe so long as it didn't directly affect them. Nobody was going to want to help the local pedophile as Nazis tore him apart.

Attacking a Ward's family was so far outside of his acceptable target list it wasn't even funny. This was the kind of thing that would bring the wrath of the Protectorate down on his little Empire.

"We don't need permission from Kaiser to help the cause, do we boys?" Ben sneered in defiance, but there were more than a few spikes of fear at the mention of Kaiser not knowing what they were doing. It seemed while the group was eager to let their inner sadists loose on what they deemed as acceptable targets, they also understood the danger of going against their parahuman overlords. All except Ben were coiled with nervousness at the thought of getting on their leader's bad side. Apparently unsatisfied with the lack of vocal responses, Ben turned around to face his little gang and gripped his pistol a little more tightly. "Do we?"

The chorus of agreements were halfhearted at best, but Ben seemed to be satisfied. He turned his attention back to Boogeyman and raised his pistol as a warning. "Now why don't you move out of the way so we can deal with the niggers, girly."

Boogeyman felt one of her nonexistent eyebrows twitch. Girly? She who had made grown men wet their pants out of sheer terror was being called 'girly'? If it wasn't for the fact that most of the lobby was lit out with the rays of the sun, she would have killed him right then and there. As it was, she settled for tearing him apart mentally.

"Tsk, tsk Ben," Boogeyman said with a sneer. "Your parents must be truly disappointed in you. No wonder they left you to an orphanage."

Ben's previously calm façade transformed to one of rage and anger. It was amusing to see how easily he gave into his fear and nightmares. To have to live with the idea that he was absolutely worthless and unwanted as a person, to the point where not even his own parents wanted him. And that was what this entire thing was really about, it wasn't to prove that whites were somehow superior to others, but that he wanted to be recognized as important.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Ben asked as he tightened his grip around his pistol's trigger. It was at this point that Boogeyman realized that the group didn't recognize who she was. With the only real lighting coming from the sun they stairwell was virtually unlit, and her dark form blended into the shadows with absolutely no effort on her part as they clung to her like a second skin. They crept and pulled towards her like pairs of hands seeking an open hug. To them, she was nothing more than an indistinct figure in the hands of an unnaturally deep darkness.

Boogeyman said nothing in response to his question, instead of taking a step forward. More than one of the men flinched at the unearthly sound that the steps made as she slowly made her way down the stairs.

"Who am I?" she asked lightly, a wide grin overtaking her features that made Ben flinch. She stopped just above the first step on the stairwell that was receiving direct illumination from the sun and allowed the shadows to fall away. Chris and a few of the younger and less hardened of the group paled rapidly as her appearance became far more recognizable. Even Ben took a step back at her seemingly towering form.

"I'm the Boogeyman," she said, an amused chuckled bubbling under her calm exterior. She could feel the sweet terror rolling off their forms, a delightful smell to her metaphorical nose. She could tell that most of them had seen her little "get together" with the Merchants and were now reconsidering their plans.

"So, you've heard of me," she said with a wide grin that sent chills down their spines. None of the Nazis nodded. Instead, they were frozen stiff at the sight of a parahuman who had the capability to rip them apart within seconds. "Well then, I suppose you all know what happens to criminals that cross my path?" Oh, the spike of terror at her words was delicious and oh so satisfying.

"I'm not afraid of you," Ben snarled, his finger mere nanometers from squeezing the trigger. She kept smiling at the man even as she saw through his paper-thin lie but also kept a close eye on his pistol. While she doubted that she would die from a gun as small as that when she had survived a point-blank shotgun blast, she didn't feel eager to test her theory quite yet. "None of us are afraid of you, are we?"

The group was caught in the claws in indecision. She could feel their fears warring with each other as they struggled to make up their mind on who scared them the most. Her, or Ben. She could feel the terror that she had inspired coursing through their veins like cold ice, but it was muted by the fear they held for their leader. A man who they had seen commit horrible acts to others without nary a second thought. They knew what Ben would do to them if they tried to run, they had no idea what she would do to them.

 _I suppose it's time to teach them_ , Boogeyman thought with great relish. She would show them that her treatment of criminals wasn't limited to the Merchants or the "lesser races" like Sophia. Every criminal would fear her with equal dread and terror. She wasn't one to discriminate.

"I suppose we'll have to see about that, won't we?" Boogeyman said as she drew herself back into the darkness, becoming one herself as she sank into the shadows, becoming nothing more than an indiscriminate blob to the eyes of the Nazis.

"Maybe we should…" one of the men started to say after the intervening silence, only to be cut off by a snarl from Ben.

"We aren't turning back now just because of some pale bitch," he growled, his form wreathed in anger borne from fear. Boogeyman could tell that he wasn't going to change his mind, even with her threat hanging over his shoulders. If anything, he was even more committed to seeing this entire thing through to prove that he wasn't scared of her like he claimed.

"But…" Chris tried to intervene, his face pale. She could feel that the young man was terrified of her and was weighing the odds of how far he would be able to get before a bullet was placed in his back. The fear of Ben killing him was the only thing that was keeping him in place. All she would have to do was show them that they needed to be more concerned about her killing them.

"Do you really think she's going to stop us? You all saw what she did to that nigger," Ben said with a sadistic grin. Boogeyman knew from the moment that she set out against Sophia there would be fools who thought that her actions would align her with the Empire. It appeared that Ben was going to be the first of these fools.

She would just have to correct him of his little misjudgment.

There were few hushed murmurs at Ben's words, a brief relief overtaking the group as the man's racist logic overtook their common sense. They wanted to believe that they were doing what they believe to be the right thing so much that they were willing to ignore the facts laid out before them. It might have been funny if it wasn't so sad.

"Now come on, let's go teach that nigger's family a lesson," Ben said with a smile as he climbed up the darkened stairs. The stair squeaked under his weight, but to the relief to the Nazis, she didn't jump out of the shadows and skewer their leader on a pike. Emboldened by their apparent victory the rest of the gang followed Ben up the stairs as their caution started to be superseded by their bloodlust.

As they climbed up the creaking stairs, Boogeyman followed, her shadowy form slithering up the steps like a dark stain. As they rounded the first corner and lost a direct view of the front door Boogeyman started her work.

"Five little Nazis climbing up the stairs," Boogeyman sang with the voice of a seven-year-old child. The group tensed at her words, each one tightening their grip around their makeshift weaponry in an effort to stave off the fear clinging to them like a second skin.

"Ignore her," Ben growled as he waved his gun in a vaguely threatening manner. The group hesitated for a moment before continuing their way up, though from the shadows Boogeyman could see that each one of them was glancing at every scrap of darkness, looking for her point of entry. Even Ben, who tried to hide his fear behind a wall of anger, couldn't help but let his eyes flicker around the room to ensure his own well-being.

Not that it would save them.

"One died suffocating from a lack of air."

She let the words sink into the group for a split second as she relished in the spike of fear that they all felt at her words. Then, without a moment to lose, she jumped out of the shadows and wrapped her arms around the rear member of the party. The tall but wiry man gasped as his airway was cut off by her supernatural strong arms. He dropped his baseball bat and desperately grasped at her limbs in an attempt to free himself, but he might as well have been trying to carve through solid stone. Just as the rest of the group started to realize what was wrong and turn around to help their comrade Boogeyman _pulled_.

She could feel the man struggling as she carried him into the shadow realm as he screamed in pure terror. The sound immediately cut off as the entered the other world. The man's eyes bulged out of his sockets as he whirled around, examining his new environment, looking for a means of escape. A futile effort as she and her minions were the only ones that could travel between the two worlds. The man struggled for a few more seconds as his face started to turn blue from a lack of oxygen. Boogeyman was curious to how long he would be able to last before dying, but she had four other Nazis to take care of.

"Four little Nazis climbing up the stairs," she sang as she relished in the panicked screams that came from a few members of the party. She could feel their fear and terror rolling around inside of them as what little critical thinking they had was eaten away.

"One died being stabbed by a spear." Said Nazi didn't even have time to realize what was happening to him as Boogeyman impaled a large spear into where the man's heart was. Or rather now, where the man's heart used to be. Blood and viscera splattered as her cone-ish spear shredded meat and bone in a single move, the tiny grains of sand tearing up everything they touched like a chainsaw. The man in front of him screamed and wet his pants as the warm sticky fluids and bits of his heart were strewn all across his back.

"Ben!" Chris, the man who had been standing in front of the man she had just impaled screamed at the top of his lungs. "Do something!"

The man in question snarled as he tried to hide how pants-shittingly terrified he was from his fellow Nazis. His pistol glinted in the dull lighting as he took aim. His former friend's body hadn't even hit the floor yet when he let his first shot loose. The bang of the gun inside the tiny stairwell was deafening and made Boogeyman's ears ring in displeasure. The shot went wide as a result of the man's tremoring hands. Wood splintered and fragmented and Boogeyman could feel the fear of those living in the apartment complex suddenly redouble at the sound of gunfire.

A second shot rang out and this time Boogeyman grunted as her shoulder was rocked backwards by the blow. She stumbled back a bit, but quickly reoriented herself. Compared to the point-blank shotgun blast she had taken from Skidmark, this was nothing. She gave the remained Nazis an unfriendly smile as the bullet clinked onto the floor. It was more than a little amusing to finally see Ben's anger give way to his fear as the full realization of how screwed he was hit him.

"Run!" Chris screamed as he and the others started to fight to get away from her and up the stairs first.

"Three little Nazis climbing up the stairs," Boogeyman sang as her scythe formed in her hands. Chris, who had the misfortune of being the last member of the group, turned around, eyes bulging out of his skull in pure terror as she raised the deadly farming instrument.

"One died from his neck being sheared." The blade swung down, splintering wood and plaster as the arc carved along the walls before finally slicing the man's neck. Chris' head rolled down a few steps with his expression of pure horror forever frozen on his face. His body remained standing for a moment longer before it slumped to the ground like a puppet that had it string cut. As she stepped over the body and climbed up the stairs, she could hear the last two Nazis fighting it out for whoever got to die next.

As if they had a choice in the matter.

"Two little Nazis climbing up the stairs," she sang as she rounded the corner. The man who wasn't Ben was clutching his nose as the aforementioned Nazi raced up the stairwell as he tried to save his own hide.

"One died trampled by some mares." At her command, the Nightmares that she had gathered erupted from the shadows like a herd of the damned. In the narrow stairwell, they couldn't manifest completely, instead retaining a wispier quality as they descended on the screaming man like a pack of starving wolves. Boogeyman didn't bother to watch, she already knew what was going to happen to him.

She weaved around the black writhing mass, ignoring the terrified screams as they started to die out. She'd give him a minute before he finally died. As they rounded the corner to the third floor, she found Ben desperately clawing at the doors, looking for a way to get out of this nightmare.

"One little Nazi climbing up the stairs." The man spun around, arms shaking as he held his pistol in her direction, but to her, he might as well have been waving a wet noodle in her face.

"He died because he couldn't face his fears."

The man crumpled in on himself as she approached him. She loomed over him like a massive bird of prey, her very form blocking out what little light remained. She smiled at the small and pathetic whimper he gave her as he tried to back away from her, to escape her grasp, only to hit his back against the wall. She could feel his fear of dying or being torn to pieces as his friends had. She decided to relieve him of that fear.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to kill you," Boogeyman said with a small knowing smile.

She could feel a small spark of hope flicker inside the man at her words. "Y-you aren't?"

"No, I'm going to do something worse." Whatever relief the man felt was quickly swept away by a tidal wave of terror. She could practically hear his bones cracking against each other as he shook on the spot. A dark stain spread across his pants as she drew herself in closer. The man gagged and sputtered as her hand wrapped around his throat like a vice and pulled him off the ground. As he struggled impotently against her iron grip she slammed him into the wall, knocking the air out of him.

"Y-you can't do this," Ben said, his face as white as a sheet and eyes as wide as dinner plates as he tried to get her to back off. She could feel his pulse slamming against his flesh like a jackhammer as she held him up against the wall like a toy. She could feel his fear of being helpless bubbling to the surface like tar, consuming everything it touched. The man was terrified because he was no longer in command, no longer in control. Boogeyman had all the power and Ben knew it.

And it terrified him.

"Of course I can do this to you," Boogeyman said in a tone that one would usually reserve for when they were talking with a particularly thick child. "You're a Nazi, I could skin you alive and wear your face for a mask and nothing of consequence would be lost."

She smiled at the bone-chilling terror that shot up his spine at her callous attitude towards his life. Did he really think that after a lifetime of treating other people like dirt that he thought that he could pull the morality card on her after having ignored his own for so long?

"Tell me, and do be honest," Boogeyman said with a smile. "What did you think of my little song? It still needs some work, and it probably won't be winning any music awards anytime soon, but I'm quite proud of it. What do you think?" The man whimpered as memories of his friend's deaths flashed through his mind.

"I still haven't quite worked out what the final verse will be, but that's what you're here for aren't you?" Boogeyman said. The man's eyes were so wide now that if they got any bigger they were liable to pop like a pair of overinflated balloons. Boogeyman felt her grin stretch even wider as a blade of sand formed in her free hand. Ben whimpered and tried to move away from the insanely sharp blade being brought within millimeters of his face, but he couldn't move at all in Boogeyman's unyielding grip.

"I really need something that will hit home the consequences of being a Nazi," Boogeyman said in a musing tone as the tip of the blade traced the man's cheek. The man flinched as his skin broke along the thin tip of the blade, a single trickle of blood running down his face as he whimpered, his face as pale as death. "It needs to be something that everyone in your little army can relate to," Boogeyman continued, unconcerned with her victim's state of mind.

"You've said a lot of hateful things, haven't you? Maybe I should take your tongue," Boogeyman said as she allowed her knife to draw closer to the man's mouth. The man tried to struggle against her grip in a raw untamed panic, but it still did nothing more than ruffle her robes as his legs kicked the empty air.

"Or maybe I should just skin you," Boogeyman mused as she ignored the man's muted cries for help. "It be pretty hard to claim that your skin color is superior when you don't have any, don't you think?" The man screamed behind her hand at her words as his pulse beat against her cold lifeless fingers like a drum.

"You know, you're not that different from Sophia Hess," Boogeyman said in a conversational tone as her cold yellow eyes studied the man's form like he was a particularly interesting insect. Ben didn't stop squirming under her grip, but he did calm down a little once he realized she wasn't mutilating him quite yet. "People like you and Sophia, you always have to be stronger than someone, don't you? Because none of you can stand the idea that you're weak, there always has to be someone or some group of people beneath you so that you can feel better about yourself. It's pathetic, really."

Boogeyman carried on with her minor rant as she waved her knife in the air while her grip around the man's jaw started to tighten. "I mean, it's ridiculous the lengths that people like you go to, to provide yourself with the illusion of strength. And the moment that illusion shatters, you all act like a bunch of broken cowards. Your true colors, I suppose," Boogeyman said with a look of distaste marring her features.

"But you know what really irks me?" Boogeyman asked as she stared the man in the eyes. The man shivered but shook his head the best he could. It came across like the thrashing of a dying fish, but Boogeyman got the idea. "It's that behind each one of you is a system. A set or group of people that enable your behaviors and encourage you to continue it, and no matter how many of you I'll kill, the system will just make more," she groused with a dark look.

"So, I'm going to break the system," Boogeyman said, her tone taking a gleeful and disturbing aspect that sent shivers down the man's spine. "The PRT tried to contain it, to keep the damage away from those that 'matter', but all they've done is allow it to spread like a weed. They've allowed themselves to enable your behavior and have convinced the city that this is the best that they can do. After all, if they can't stop you, then what's the point in trying?"

Ben shivered at the cold spark in her empty yellow eyes that seemed to stare into his very soul. "But the only way to deal with a weed is to pull it out by the roots," Boogeyman hissed, her tone as cold as liquid nitrogen. "So, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to rip your precious little Empire to pieces and bring your whole system crashing down. My video to the city was a Declaration of War, but you? You're my declaration of intent."

The knife in her hand suddenly took a serrated edge as it drew far closer to his flesh than Ben would have liked. Boogeyman reveled in the Nazi's terror as the tip of her blade depressed against his skin and drew the tiniest traces of blood to run down the black blade.

"FREEZE!"

Boogeyman paused as a warm feeling of relief passed through the man's system. She dismissed her blade and slowly turned around to face the interloper.

Miss Militia stood in front of the open stairwell, her scarf covered most of her face, but it did little to detract from her piercing eyes as they stared her down. On the outside, Boogeyman kept up her calm appearance, while on the inside she was kicking herself for allowing herself to be so intoxicated by the Nazi's fear that she didn't even notice someone else entering her range. It was a mistake that she wouldn't allow herself to make again, but all she could do now was roll with the punches.

"Miss Militia," she said in a calm and even tone while her mouth stretched into a wide unsettling grin. "So nice to finally meet you."

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	15. Shadow 2-c

**Enjoy!**

Shadow 2.c

Miss Militia weaved through the early morning traffic with the speed of a woman possessed. Her motorcycle engine roared as she pushed it to its limits. Her gloved hands gripped the handles so tightly she could feel the grip of the handlebar twisting underneath her hands. She tried to focus on avoiding the surrounding traffic instead of the insidious and dark thoughts that edged their way into her mind.

Thoughts of seeing Ms. Hess and Thomas Hess strung up the side of a building made her heart pound against her ribcage so hard that for a moment she feared that it would burst out. She couldn't let that happen, too many people had already suffered because of the PRT and Protectorate's negligence of this whole situation.

 _"Militia, Dauntless, and Triumph are on their way, but it will be at least ten minutes before they catch up to you,"_ Velocity said through her ear-comm.

"Understood console," she replied, her voice somewhat muffled through her scarf and the heavy wind resistance from her bike. Armsmaster had been in a meeting with Piggot when the call had come in and was still putting on his armor. Velocity was on the Rig for his turn on console duty and would take at least twenty minutes to get from the Protectorate headquarters to her position, even with his speed, and last she heard Assault and Battery were engaged with Rune and Krieg which would leave them occupied for the next fifteen minutes at the very least. That meant that she was the only hero that could possibly make it to the Hess apartment to stop this tragedy before it started.

There was a PRT van full of troopers right behind her, but it's bulky deposition meant that it had to wait for the clogged streets to part ways so that it could get through whilst she could move straight through the traffic with no issue.

As she made her final turn her insides clenched at the sight of the Hess' apartment complex. The door was shattered, a clear sign that the gang had already breached the perimeter and were making their way up to the Hess' apartment. Her engine roar cut off with a click as she parked in front of the building and dismounted with an ease that came from years of practice. She ducked through the broken door as she minded the shattered glass and made her way up the stairs. Her power flickered through a few forms before she allowed it to settle as a police riot shield. It wouldn't help offensively, but climbing up a set of narrow and noisy stairs without protection was just asking for an ambush.

As she made her way up the second flight Miss Militia paused. Lying before her, strewn out along the worn-out stairs was a dead body.

She would have liked to say that it wasn't something she saw too often, but Brockton Bay had no shortage of homicides, parahuman or otherwise. What was strange was that the carcass clearly belonged to an E88 member. With his brown shirt and pants, alongside his shaved head made it clear who this man once held allegiance to. His blue eyes were frozen in an expression of shock and horror as a puddle of crimson fluid coalesced underneath him.

The injury that had been the cause of the man's mortal coil being snapped was fairly obvious. A great hole had been punched through his torso that severed his spine and shredded his heart into tiny little pieces of muscle. From the way, the muscles fibers were positioned on his back the assailant most likely pulled out their blade after stabbing them. She bent down to check his pulse, but as she suspected he was already dead. His body was still warm and his lips were only just now turning purple, which meant that whoever had done this to him couldn't be that long gone.

Miss Militia pulled herself away from the dead man and continued to make her way up the stairs as cautiously as she could as her mind raced with possibilities of who could have done such damage. Whatever the weapon had been it had been thick and long, but at the same time, durable enough cut through bone and muscles. If anything, it reminded her of a lance as the way it pulverized the heart and nicked the lungs and liver suggested that it would have been huge, more like a cone or cylinder than a standard blade. But the thought of someone trying to sneak a medieval weapon into an apartment complex didn't make much sense. A parahuman power perhaps?

It wouldn't be impossible to think that someone in the complex had triggered out of fear and panic of being added to the death toll, but that didn't quite ring right with the Protectorate Blaster.

As she turned the comer to the next stairwell she found another body. This body was once again an obvious Empire member, with tattoos covering his bare arms. This time, however, instead of having his heart stabbed through, his head was no longer attached to his neck. The wound was a single clean cut with no evidence of any serration which told Miss Militia two things. One was that whatever weapon had done this had been very sharp, which didn't match with the injuries of the other body. This would have been an entirely different weapon, more along the lines of an ax than a lance. The second thing was that whoever had done this was strong. While it was certainly well within the capabilities of a normal human to perform a decapitation, it was usually while the target was subdued and not struggling and took some practice to get the blade to move through the bone on the first try.

Miss Militia could feel her gut start to churn at the thought of one cape in particular who had recently shown a propensity for beheading. If Boogeyman was here did that mean that she wanted to get revenge on Hess' family herself and was just killing the Empire gang members because it was convenient for her?

Figuring out Boogeyman's real identity had been child's play for the PRT given the wealth of information that had been given to them in the form of Sophia Hess' unmasking, even with the facial recognition software on the fritz. That response had been far too heated for it to be anything but personal and combined with video evidence of her admitting her identity to Sophia, they had been able to determine that the new cape was one Taylor Hebert.

Of course, even armed with that knowledge they had found it next to impossible to find any form of leverage to use on the girl. It made Militia feel sick to think that they were trying to strong arm a girl who had been traumatized by one of their own members, but what Taylor had done was completely beyond the pale. As it was they had absolutely nothing to leverage her with, both of her parents were dead, one being quite recent in fact, and she had no other ties to hold her down. Sophia had apparently isolated her at school which left her with no friend to concern herself with. She was a crusader who had nothing to lose, which made her even more dangerous than they had thought possible.

Miss Militia steeled herself as she passed another body with an equally gruesome death. While the others had been clearly killed by human hands, this one looked like it had been…gnawed on. Militia paused as she reached the third floors stairwell as the sound of an unfamiliar voice filtered down to her level. The heroine could feel her muscles tense as she carefully made her way up the last set of stairs. She couldn't quite make out what was being said, but the tone was far too relaxed for it to be a civilian.

As she made her way around the corner Miss Militia kept her power on alert to change at a moment's notice.

"…to rip your precious little Empire to pieces and bring your whole system crashing down. My video to the city was a Declaration of War, but you? You're my declaration of intent."

As the cold voice spoke Miss Militia could hear the faint but panicked cries of another. Readying herself Miss Militia rounded the corner and brought her weapon up in a new form as she came face to face with the perpetrator of all these deaths.

"FREEZE!" Miss Militia shouted as she brought her weapon up in the form of a taser. They had some eyewitness accounts from the Merchants that Boogeyman had survived being blasted with a shotgun, but such accounts were unreliable given the panicked behavior of the eyewitnesses and the standard Merchant behavior of being drugged up to their eyeballs. Starting her way at the bottom and working up would be far safer than overestimating Boogeyman's resistance and accidently killing her.

The cape in question turned her gaze from the struggling Empire goon pinned to the wall like a fly in a display case as he struggled against her apparently iron strong grip. Miss Militia had seen a lot of horrible things in her life. She had seen beings that were monstrous on the outside as they were on the inside and those that looked all too human. She remembered each one of them in their own horrible glory as they waded through rivers of blood. Sometimes literally. She shouldn't have been unsettled by Boogeyman's offsetting appearance, and yet she couldn't help but twitch a bit as those cold yellow eyes stared into her very soul.

It was as if there was something about her mere appearance that set her subconscious on edge. That niggling little voice that warned children about the monsters in the dark.

"Miss Militia," Boogeyman said in a conversational tone with an expression that had far too many teeth to be considered a smile. "So nice to finally meet you. Tell me, does the Protectorate intend on showing up after I've done their job for them every time?"

"Put the man down _now_ ," Miss Militia ordered as she ignores the parahuman's words. She had tangled with people like Kaiser and Jack Slash far too many times to be distracted by whatever garbage they spew from their mouths. Boogeyman seemed to contemplate her for a moment, and Miss Militia feared that the situation would descend into conflict with a normal in the way when Boogeyman smiles.

"Very well," she said, before throwing the man into the floor with such force that the wooden floor cracked underneath the force of the impact. The man coughed painfully, the slightest trickle of blood trailing out of his mouth as he curled up in on himself as his body burned in agony. Miss Militia found that she really couldn't bring herself to feel too much sympathy for him, the man had come here with the intention of torturing and killing a Ward's family.

"Stand down, Boogeyman," Miss Militia ordered, a small kernel of hope that this entire situation could be resolved peacefully burning in her chest. That hope died as Boogeyman only scoffed at the demands.

"Oh, do you intend to arrest me for doing what should be your job?" the parahuman asked, her hands clasped behind her back. Miss Militia could feel her muscles tense as Boogeyman started to move around the small room. She didn't make any threatening moves but instead circled around her like a vulture eyeing a piece of meat. Miss Militia could have shot her then and there, but she still had no idea if the taser would work and was hesitant to bring a stronger gun in an occupied by civilians. There was no telling who she could hit if her shot missed and went through the relatively thin walls.

"Murder, torture, demasking a Ward- that alone would be enough to sentence you for the rest of your life, never mind everything else you've done," Miss Militia said with a cold look on her face. She couldn't afford to let her judgment be compromised, nor could she allow the parahuman to know how conflicted she was about this. But from the look on the woman's face she knew exactly what she was thinking.

"And yet you're hesitant to pull that trigger, and not just because you're afraid you'll miss," Boogeyman said with a curious look on her face as if she was a puzzle that she just couldn't quite figure out.

 _Thinker?_ Miss Militia thought as she examined the cape. They were still waiting on the Think Tank to get a better grasp on what her powers were, but that didn't mean she couldn't add in her own thoughts. Still, as useful as knowing what her powers were she had a more pressing issue to deal with.

"…I know what Sophia did to you Taylor," Miss Militia said in an extremely quiet voice. There was a brief flash of shock and surprise on Boogeyman's face, but it was quickly schooled back into a more neutral expression. Even so, Miss Militia could still see a faint glint of genuine surprise in the cape's cold eyes.

Technically speaking this like this was against protocol, negotiating with villains that threatened hero's identities was prohibited. But given the circumstances and the need to get the young woman to calm down Militia was willing to bend the rules a little bit.

"So, you know," Boogeyman said in a completely toneless voice. "You know how much of a failure you and the PRT are."

Miss Militia could feel her guilt coiling in her stomach like an angry snake. As much as she wanted to deny it, there was no way to get around the fact that this girl's suffering was partly her fault. While Piggot held direct authority over the Brockton Bay Ward, she was the one to interact with them. That technically should have been Armsmaster's job, and while the man was okay with kids, he spent too much time working in his lab to be an effective day to day leader.

Even if her PRT handler hadn't flagged anything as suspicious with Sophia (and she was going to have _words_ with Ms. Smith when Piggot was done with her) she should have still caught on that something was wrong. She always made it a habit to review the Ward's files every week and while she had noticed the personality discrepancies between Sophia's school life and her Ward life, she hadn't thought anything of it. She knew more than a few capes who acted differently in costume than their civilian identity, it was just far easier to get act out when people didn't know who you were.

She had always assumed that Sophia simply expressed herself more in her cape identity because she felt free from her civilian constraints. And while the girl had never really talked about her trigger event, which was more than understandable, Miss Militia had a fairly good idea of Sophia's trigger event was and what it entailed. That feeling of helplessness and being trapped by one more powerful than you. So, she had taken Sophia's bad attitude in stride, viewing it as a coping mechanism for a broken girl, and understanding that trying to clamp down on it completely would leave Sophia in an even worse mental condition than before.

Had she known what she knew now, she would have never let the girl off the hook that easily. Triggering was something that all parahumans understood, no matter how evil or insane they were, they all understood what it meant to go through a trigger event. It was being forced down to the lowest moment of your life, and then being forced down even more, past the breaking point, past all rationality. It was the moment that you looked into the abyss and it looked back.

Miss Militia had been consumed by the abyss once, in those fields in a place that had once been her home. She could remember the blood and screaming as she used her powers to lash out against the warlords that had turned her life into a living hell. And she remembered.

She remembered everything, of how an instant felt like an eternity, of how the entire _world_ seemed to fall out underneath her as everything shattered and the Beings came down from the heavens and gifted her the power to save herself.

And as she stared at Taylor Hebert she couldn't help but feel sympathy for her. Even knowing the deaths that could be laid at her hands and her treatment of Sophia, she couldn't help but understand. She was a woman who had been something that most people couldn't understand, that most people didn't want to understand, and had come out broken. She had been granted the power to push back against those who broke her and raise herself from the dark abyss that she had been thrown into by her tormenters.

"Was is worth it Taylor? Everything you did to Sophia, was it worth it?" Miss Militia murmured. Taylor Hebert's eyes locked with hers and she saw something in those cold orbs that sent a frightened chill down her spine. There was something wrong with her, wrong and cold and old.

And dark.

There was no logical reason for her to feel like this, but it felt like she was staring into the heart of a black sun, as if all light was being sucked into Hebert, never to be seen again. She could feel something wrong with her memories, the dreams she once had as a child, dreams that she could remember in perfect clarity thanks to her powers were fading away. Dreams of her father and mother and all the village, dreams that she had clung onto more than anything to get her through the dark times were being shrouded by a dark fog. It blanketed its self over those memories, drawing them into its thick mists the more she tried to bring them to the surface.

"Yes," Taylor said, breaking Miss Militia away from her realization. The capes voice was as cold as the arctic winds as she stared down the heroine, her hands clenched into fists. "It was worth it. Sophia, she took everything from me. My friend, my family, my _life_ , she is responsible for all of it. She took away what was most precious to me, so I did the same to her," Boogeyman snarled, her expression one of rage and hatred. "I took away from her what she valued most all, her strength."

"It doesn't have to be this way Taylor," Miss Militia said as she desperately tried to grab ay straws in hopes for a peaceful resolution, or at the very least to stall for time so the others could get here and assist her. She didn't want this to devolve into mindless violence and ruin any chance Taylor had at getting the help she needed.

"Oh, I think it does," Taylor said with a humorless smile. "The PRT and Protectorate have created a system that does nothing but perpetuate the suffering of the city. You allow countless civilians to suffer under the tyranny of the villains because you're all too cowardly to make any real change. You claim you're trying to save us when your own members go on campaigns of torment for their own amusement."

"Sophia was an anomaly," Miss Militia said as she struggled to keep her power in its taser format. She could feel it struggling to turn itself into a more powerful form at the perceived threat to her wellbeing, but she didn't want to have to escalate the situation any more than she already had. "I promise that what happened with Sophia will not happen again."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Taylor said with an ugly sneer. There was a glint in her eyes that suggested that she had previous experiences with promises that had been broken. Miss Militia could feel her throat go dry as she stared into those cold eyes, and despite herself, she could feel her gut coiling in fear.

"We didn't know about Sophia, Taylor. If we had it would have never gotten this bad," Miss Militia said as she tried to maintain her composure.

"Oh? And if you did find out what Sophia had been doing, would you have told the public? Or instead, would you have buried it so that nobody would ever find out how much you've all failed? I doubt that you would have even taken her off the roster, would you? After all, what's a hero to a single useless civilian?" Taylor asked in a mocking tone that dug a knife of guilt into her gut. While she was hardly privy to all of the PRT's secrets, she knew that more than a few had been sacrificed to create a greater good and save many more lives.

"That wouldn't happen," Miss Militia said with as much honesty as she could muster. She knew that she was lying of course. The PR team would have never allowed Piggot or anyone in the PRT or Protectorate let the world know what one of their Wards had done underneath their very nose. They couldn't afford to have such bad press with the shape that the city was in, and such an event would have repercussion across the entire country. She knew that they were more than capable of suppressing a story like that, but it didn't sit right with her then and it didn't sit right with her now.

But if she had to lie to get Taylor to calm down and come back to the base and sort this entire mess out then it would be worth it. She couldn't see another teenager wallow through the blood and darkness as they sought for the light.

"It wouldn't be right if that happened," Miss Militia said. She had to show Taylor that she understood what she was going through and that she wouldn't be alone if she just came with her to the Rig.

"No, it wouldn't be right," Taylor agreed slowly as she gave her a look that made Miss Militia feel as if her outer layers and masks were being stripped back so that her very soul was being laid bare before her. "But you wouldn't do anything to stop it, would you?"

Miss Militia opened her mouth underneath her American flag scarf to protest, to argue that she wouldn't sit idly and allow someone's right to justice to be trampled underneath the boots of bureaucracy, but she was cut off by a sharp wave of Taylor's hand that almost made her pull the trigger on her taser.

"Don't try and lie to me Militia. It might not sit right with you, but you would still do it, wouldn't you? If you were ordered to by your superiors, you would go through with it." Taylor waved her hand and rolled her eyes, "Oh, it might make you feel sick to your stomach and make you hate yourself with the passion of a thousand stars, but you would still do it- so long as it was for the greater good, wouldn't you?"

Miss Militia could feel her throat go dry as words poured out of Taylor's mouth. Words that she wanted to ignore and deny but she found that she couldn't. The silence that filled the space was absolutely deafening to her ears.

Taylor smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.

"That's what I thought. You don't get to claim the moral high ground when you're drenched in the blood of your victims," she said, her words callous and cruel. "At least I admit what I am. You? You hide it behind a mask of friendliness and understanding that draws people into your lies. You mold them into ways that suit you, hiding the truth behind your façade of friendliness so well that even _you_ didn't notice what you have become."

Miss Militia tried to butt in, to derail the momentum that Taylor had collected, but she was swept away by the deluge of hate filled words that hit her as hard as an Endbringer.

"You're all so willing to sacrifice pawns to get to your goals, justified that the cost will be well worth the sacrifice," Taylor said, her lips stretching into a fang-filled smile. "Congratulations Miss Militia, this time, you're the warlord giving the marching orders."

Miss Militia froze at the words, her face slipping into a mask of cold rage whilst her mind whirled with possibilities of how Boogeyman could have known about her past. Her power shifted from its taser form into a pistol. But not just any pistol, the first weapon that she had ever manifested formed within her grip in response to her heightened sense of fear. The gun rested her in her hands like an old friend, a comforting blanket that had saved her from death all those years ago. She could feel her fingers twitch in a desire to pull the trigger, but she had to restrain herself. Help was only a few minutes away and all she had to was let Boogeyman keep on insulting her to stay in place.

 _I can handle a few insults._ Militia told herself in the dark recesses of her mind. If she had a little more conviction she might have convinced herself of her lie.

"I suppose it's ironic that in the end, you became the very thing that shaped you," Boogeyman said with a wicked grin. Her eyes had flickered to her new gun for a moment, but she remained undaunted. "How does it feel Miss Militia? To be on the other end of the minefield?"

Memories that Miss Militia desperately whished that she didn't have to remember with perfect clarity bubbled to the surface. Memories of friends being forced to march to their death came to the forefront of her mind, and for that single instant, she was no longer in an apartment complex. She was back in that forest, staring down at one of the monsters who had killed everyone she had ever loved.

The deafening crack of a single pistol shot brought her back to reality.

Boogeyman's head shot back and for a horrible moment, Miss Militia thought that she had killed her. That feeling quickly gave way to relief and a growing dread as Boogeyman brought her head forward until they were eye to eye. Miss Militia paused as the bullet that she had shot right between Boogeyman's eyes with pinpoint accuracy be pushed out as flesh knitted itself back together with shadows and darkness.

"Nice try, but no," Boogeyman said with a wide unhinged grin. She then shot forward, arms outstretched to engulf the Blaster. Miss Militia tried to move out of the way, but the younger parahuman was far too fast for her to dodge.

"Urk!" She grunted as she was pressed against the wall. She didn't feel anything break, but she would be surprised if she didn't have bruises when this was all over. Her weapon wielding hand was being pinned to the side by Boogeyman's other hand, but it didn't really matter since she could just summon her weapon to her free hand. She wasn't sure if a stun gun would do anything, but an electrical discharge might distract her long enough to break free of her grip.

"I don't think so," Boogeyman growled as her hand shot up from her arm to wrap around the green pistol still resting in Militia's hand. Militia tried to summon her weapon to her free hand, but she could feel her heartbeat race as she realized that she couldn't move her weapon. She could only watch in horror as Boogeyman _squeezed._

Green energy crumbled like tin foil under the parahuman's grip as her fingers dug into a mimicry of metal. Militia watched as black sand spread from Boogeyman's fingertips like a poison, corrupting everything it touched. The bright vibrant green that Miss Militia had come to associate with her powers gave way to a thick black void that sent chills down her spine. As her gun lost form she could feel something in her the back of her mind rebel and recoil in horror as the worst headache she had ever felt was unleashed on her.

It was like her head was being crushed open by a jackhammer as she fell to the floor screaming. As the pain started to fade away and the spots cleared from her eyes Miss Militia stood up to face the smug looking parahuman. Miss Militia could feel her lips curling into a frown as she tried to reform the pistol that had once saved her life. But instead of her power responding to her call, it flickered and sputtered like static on a T.V. screen as if it couldn't comprehend what she was trying to do.

Her panic faded as she made if form a rifle loaded with rubber bullets, but she couldn't help but feel that a part of her had been violently torn from her. While she preferred not to think about her past, that gun had always been a calming presence to her, an assurance that she was free and safe. To feel it ripped away from her like that…

"What did you do?" Miss Militia asked Boogeyman, her voice cold and hard as she tried to hide her sheer terror of being disarmed like that. It was an unsettling and alien experience that made her skin crawl and made her mind feel like it was being run over by sandpaper.

If Boogeyman was at all concerned with the elder cape's words she didn't show a single sign.

"Why? Scared?" Boogeyman asked with sadistic relish.

Miss Militia looked at the parahuman straight in the eyes. "Of you? No." Oh, Boogeyman may have spooked her with whatever she did to her powers, but she wasn't scared of the parahuman herself. She had been through hell and came out victorious. She had faced madmen who would slaughter towns and cities with but a passing thought, she had faced nightmares made form, monstrous figures who only brought death and destruction. She didn't back down then and she wouldn't back down now.

Boogeyman reeled if she had been physically struck, her eyes widening in surprise. It was a strange expression, as if the parahuman had been struck in the gut by some invisible force. She quickly schooled her features into a more neutral expression as she locked eyes with the Protectorate Blaster. "Perhaps," she muttered with a devious glint in her eyes that Militia didn't like. "But you're terrified of yourself."

Miss Militia tried to hide her reaction, but Boogeyman apparently caught her stiffening shoulders. "Scary, isn't? To wake up one day and realize that you're a monster," Boogeyman said in a rather conversational and relaxed tone.

Miss Militia could feel her lips curling into a sneer as her weapon struggled against her to change into something more deadly to face the threat. She was just about to give in too when the sound of wailing sirens filled the room.

"Hm. Sounds like the PRT are here to ruin all the fun," Boogeyman said, but Miss Militia found she couldn't see any real sense of urgency in the cape's words. More as if she was amused by the whole experience. "I think I'll take my leave." The young parahuman that had once been Taylor Hebert gave her a wide grin that showed off all of her unsettling fangs. "I'd wish you sweet dreams, but when I'm done there won't be any left."

There was something about that threat that sent chills of Militia's spine as if her body took notice of a threat that she could not. She moved to pull the trigger, but in an instant Boogeyman was gone, having dived into the nearest shadow. After an instant of keeping herself on guard in case of an ambush, Miss Militia allowed herself to relax and slump against the wall as the sound of creaking stair and thumbing feet signaled the arrival of the PRT squad.  
 _  
"You don't get to claim the moral high ground when you're drenched in the blood of your victims."_

But even as the friendly faces of the agents rounded the staircase, Miss Militia couldn't help but feel something curling in her gut as Boogeyman's words echoed through her mind. The Blaster let out a deep shuddering breath as she allowed her weapon to turn into a much smaller knife form.

"Are you alright ma'am?" One of the agents asked her. His face was concealed by a visor, but she could hear the concern in his voice. Miss Militia felt her grip tighten around her weapon as she considered the question.

"…No, I don't think I am."

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	16. Shadow 2-d

**Enjoy!**

Shadow 2.d

Image was everything.

This lesson had been drilled into Max Ander's head at a very early age. In the modern age of internet and television and all other sorts of methods of rapid communication it behooved one's self to present the best image they possibly could. One no longer had to just merely concern himself with those in his immediate vicinity, but the whole world. The way you smiled, the way you walked and talked, everything you did was visible to _everyone_. You had to convince the entire world who you were and why they should listen.

As Max Anders, he was the charming and kind CEO of the Medhall Corporation. He provided generous donations to Hospitals and charities. He was close friends with the mayor and helped keep the Brockton Bay PD stay on their feet. He was a man who had lost his first wife to tragedy and his second to the resentment she felt towards him for loving his first. He was eloquent and knew exactly what to say to make people feel good about themselves, and about him.

As Kaiser, he was the cold and calculating leader of Empire 88. To his subordinates his word was law, and all that opposed him fell before his blades. To his foot soldiers, he was the promise of a new future beyond the reach of the filth that tried to drag them down. To his enemies, he was death, the promise of their destruction in the face of his Empire.

These were images that Max Anders had cultivated in the wake of his father's untimely demise. They had served him well over the years, drawing in allies from all walks of life. Over half of the upper class in Brockton Bay were friends with him, or at the very least owed him favors that he could cash in at any time. His position as CEO had helped shaped the company into a major powerhouse of the Brockton Bay and the greater New England economy and was a beacon of stability and progress in a world of chaos and conflict. Through his policies, he had direct control over a majority of the pharmaceuticals in the city and diverted them to places that would benefit him more than others. His rival companies were often subject to scandals and great monetary losses that just happened to be the result of parahuman conflicts with the Empire. After all, it was hardly his fault if a building or delivery of supplies was destroyed in a fight between Hookwolf and the Protectorate.

Under his leadership, Empire 88 had become one of the strongest gangs in all of Brockton Bay in terms of numbers and quality. He could field almost twice the number of parahumans against the local Protectorate from his permanent residents alone, with almost double that number in out of state visitors and capes for hire. His elite foot soldiers were armed with the best military grade weaponry that he could afford and were all given extensive training from ex-military specialists who believed in the "cause", or at the very least believed in money. The gang's influence permeated into nearly every aspect of the city. His agents at the local high schools shaped the next generation of meat for the grinder and subtly influenced the teaching towards a more Empire oriented ideology.

While the ideology that Allfather had used to establish his gang presented…difficulties in enticing public opinion to his side, he found numerous ways to get around that issue. The fact that when most Brocktonites thought of minorities their minds went straight to the ABB or the destitute Merchants helped him greatly. But even with this advantage he stacked the deck, whether it was though the bribing of media outlets to avoid giving himself bad press, or simply giving those in his territory a measure of "safety" against the growing threat of the minorities he was considered to be the most popular of the gang leaders. He was seen as a legitimate alternative choice to the PRT and Protectorate, and hundreds of whites flocked to his arms, eager to serve in his ranks.

"Bring the prisoner forward," he intoned, infusing his voice with as much authority as he could muster. The calm commanding tone swept over the assembly like water over rocks as they eagerly moved to serve their lord. A pair of muscled and tattooed men stepped forward, half dragging half escorting a much less physically developed man in-between them. Even as they moved down the aisle Kaiser could see the panic on the man's shaking form as sweat poured down his head, clearly aware of how much trouble he was in.

When he had received word from his agents in the media of the Shadow Stalker scandal he had been delighted. Had he possessed a single ounce less of self-control he would have been bouncing off the walls in joy and vindictive glee. This had been what he had been waiting for. Even the destruction of the Merchants hadn't moved his plans as far forward as this colossal PR failure on part of the PRT. They had been irritating pests, hard to catch but easy to crush. It would have been no contest when it came time to trade blows, but the PRT was a different beast entirely. Even with all of his good PR his Empire didn't stand a chance against the juggernaut of the PRT and Protectorate's PR machine. They could afford to spent millions on marketing and advertising, to face them would have been like trying to burn out the ocean with a lighter.

But a Ward bullying a student, and a _black_ Ward at that? That was a literal goldmine of PR that he could have milked for years. It was something that would take decades for their PR machine to recover from while his own would only been emboldened by it. All he had to do was rid himself of that damnable reptile and he would be victorious. Without Lung and the ABB to counterbalance him there would have been no organization that could stand in his way. Coil was too small time to be much of a threat, no matter how many well-trained mercenaries or spies he had at his beck and call.

He could have had the entire white population of the city come to him, seeking protection from the sub-humans at the door.

But then those _**idiots**_ had to go and ruin everything.

His gauntlet groaned in protest as his hands curled into angry fists. Those who stood around this throne subtlety backed away, none of the eager to get between their Emperor and the object of his ire.

A pasty looking man was trembling before him, eyes darting around the room nervously as the specifics of his situation became clear. Kaiser could feel his power calling out to end the man's life this very instant, to impale him head to toe and leave his rotting corpse as an example to all of those who would dare to oppose his word.

But it was not to be, not yet anyway.

He wanted to kill this man so much for doing the one thing that he had specifically ordered him not to do. He wanted to kill him for putting him in this situation. But most of all, he wanted to kill him for being an _**idiot!**_

While Allfather had no shortage of public displays of savagery and violence towards the minorities of the city, Kaiser had always found such acts distasteful. Not that he cared for the victims in any way, but in that such a display would only entice the support of those who had already given into the frankly stupid notion of white supremacy.

Such acts made the Empire feared by all and cemented their position as a powerful and ruthless player in the game, but it did not help them grow as an organization. Instead they found themselves being ostracized and looked down upon by the general population. Had it not been for the fact that the Teeth had been even more hated and reveled by the city, the Empire would have never have been able to rise to the heights that it did and would have been strangled in the cradle. If he tried such acts with the same frequency and savagery as his father, then he was certain he would be looking down the barrel of the metaphorical gun. The PRT and Protectorate wouldn't allow such actions to slide without retaliation, or at the very least the illusion of retaliation. It had been one of the reasons that he had been forced to change how the Empire worked and how it was viewed by the plebian masses.

For all of his faults, Marquis knew how to manipulative a narrative and make him and his gang look far more inviting than working a legal job. He outreached to all groups and genders and kept a relatively PR friendly image to promote the growth of his gang. Had the organization not fractured when Marquis had been captured and taken to the Birdcage Kaiser doubted that he would have been able to compete with the man's superior image. But when Allfather had died and Kaiser took the reins of the Empire for himself he took a page out of Marquis' book.

Instead of the strong savage message his father had used to draw followers into his grasp, Kaiser took a much softer approach. He didn't demand the eradication of the minorities or place dozens of bodies on display as warnings to his enemies (at least not as often as Allfather had). No, he offered himself as a savior and protector of the white people. He offered to shelter them from the hardships created by the sub-humans. He turned the message away from death and destruction to salvation and peace.

And it worked.

The Empire's numbers had skyrocketed, particularly when Lung arrived and created a powerful common enemy for the whites to rally against. He had succeeded in creating a relatively PR friendly image for the city to rally behind, which made it difficult for the PRT and Protectorate to make much headway in destroying his organization. After all, nobody would want the people who protected them from the minority menaces to be destroyed.

It was a strategy that had served him well over the years, and what had happened this morning should have been the culmination of that work, the final nail in the coffin that would have ensured his dominance over this broken and dying city.

But now defeat had been snatched from the jaws of victory, and all because of one man's idiocy.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself?" Kaiser asked the trembling man before him. He kept his voice calm and collected, but there was an underlying tone of anger underneath that he couldn't quite hide. It was always important for him to always act like he was in command, as if nothing could possibly ruffle his feathers.

To be king, all you had to do was convince people that you were king.

It was why he held "courts" like this, in order to maintain the illusion of nobility for the common masses. The twins stood on the sides of his jagged throne like sentinels of old, each one of them ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. The building was an old warehouse that was owned by a shell company of his and had been renovated specifically for the purpose. His throne stood at the forefront of an array of seating positioned in such a way that he could meet the eyes of anyone in the audience. Chairs were set just below his own throne for the parahumans in his empire that were of the utmost importance, but he was the center of attention. The way the lights shone in the room, the color of the walls, everything had been designed to further his image of power.

In terms of attendance, the court was fairly empty overall. Most of his parahuman muscle was out in the city tending to their various territories that he had gifted them. He was expecting that Lung would make a move against him any time now and he had to be ready. A few normal were scattered in the seating, but they were more for show than anything else.

No, the main attraction was the weedy looking thirty-year-old man in the center. If there was one word Kaiser would use to describe him it was nerdy. He was as thin as could be, and looked like he was more skin and bones than muscle. He wore a dress shirt that looked like it was something that came from Goodwill. Kaiser pinned him almost instantly as a man who had always gotten the short end of the stick in terms of physical feats and was once beaten up by a group of minorities and came to the Empire for protection.

"We-well, I-um, uh," the man half sputtered as his tongue tangled up in growing dread. Kaiser could feel his blood pressure skyrocket at the fact the little weasel of a man couldn't be bothered to even come up with an excuse for his utter failure.

"Had you not been told to keep the information you had given Victor quiet?" Kaiser asked quietly, forcing his audience to draw in closer to hear him. He of course knew the answer, as did the man, but it was important to keep people on a backfoot when dealing with him to give him some more leverage. If he was lucky he could play this off as a small splinter group of the Empire. He doubted that it would convince the PRT, but it might give him a cloak of plausible deniability.

"You had," Kaiser said with such authority that the man flinched from the brass tremor of his voice. "But instead you not only chose to disobey your instructions, but you did so in such a way that you placed the entire Empire at risk." It was important for the seriousness of the situation to be homed in without causing undue worry. He couldn't afford for other members of his organization to start getting any "bright ideas".

It was an issue he had had to deal with since the start of his reign, trying to keep all of the true believers from getting out of hand. Telling a group of murders that they couldn't murder indiscriminately anymore wasn't something that came without friction. He had lumped all those malcontents underneath Hookwolf who he had kept on a very short leash. Those who were dissatisfied learned to keep their mouths shut lest they wished to face a living chainsaw.

He should have seen something like this coming when the news reached his ears but he had foolishly trusted that his men would hold their urges in check. He had grown lax and allowed his subordinates to have for freedom than he had realized, a mistake that was now costing him dearly.

"So, tell me, Zackary," Kaiser growled as he interlocked his fingers underneath his helmeted head. "What did you think the outcome of this would be? Did you think you would get a grand parade in your honor? That you would get the reputation of being the one who organized the death of a Ward's family?"

"I-" the man opened his shaking lips to speak, but Kaiser cut him off by driving a spike through his shoe. The man screamed metal erupted from the ground like plant and shattered his foot and tore flesh as it impaled his limb. Kaiser watched with dispassionate interest as the man fell to his knees as he clutched the bleeding mass of flesh that had once been his foot.

"Let me answer the question for you," Kaiser said as a sneer overtook his lips under his knightly helm. His costume was just as much a statement as everything else he did. A crown of spikes surrounded his head, jutting out of his helm like a steel cactus. His amour was pristine and shined brightly in the lighting of the court. "You didn't think at _all_."

Kaiser ignored the man's pathetic pleas for help and mercy as he carried on. At this point, he was certain that the weakling wasn't listening anymore, but this was for the benefit of those who hadn't decided to do something completely stupid quite yet.

"You didn't think about the consequences of attacking a cape's family, a Ward's family at that," Kaiser growled as hints of his real anger slipped into his speech. Honestly, Kaiser didn't give a damn about the "Unwritten Rules". No villain with half a brain really did. He used them because provided him with a certain amount of convenience and safety in his identity as Max Anders, not because he thought it was "cowardly" to attack someone's family. If he knew that killing capes out of costume would bring him closer to achieving his desire of ruling this city without any consequences he would do it in a heartbeat. But as it was, attacking a Ward civilian identity presented too great a risk for most villains to undertake.

As far as Kaiser was aware the last one to do so had been Mamba, a relatively minor villainess with a poisonous touch who had held a grudge against one of the local Wards, and didn't possess enough intelligence to recognize how much of a bad idea killing him was. The end result was the New Mexican cape getting a kill order and bringing a very angry Eidolon down on her head.

So as much as he would love to eliminate the competition, there was no way that he could emerge from the ashes unscathed. The fact that this complete waste of oxygen before him didn't recognize that infuriated him like nothing else. The Empire couldn't afford to be seen as the aggressors in this conflict, they had to be viewed as protectors and shepherds for the common people.

What was even more galling was that the _only_ reason that Legend wasn't raining down lasers on his head was because the very cape who had made the situation possible had stopped it from happening.

Boogeyman.

When she had first showed up Kaiser hadn't paid much attention to her. The destruction of the Merchants by a brand-new cape had certainly come as a great surprise to the ferrokinetic, but he had had more important things to worry about at the time. Trying to juggle Lung on one hand and the Protectorate with the other was no easy task. He had given Victor a standing order to find out what he could through his spy network, but other, more important projects had dominated the skill thief's time. So, the new cape had slipped from his attention as his focus shifted to more immediate threats.

When his agents in the new stations had called informing him of what had been done Kaiser had been more than a little surprised. He hadn't expected such a new cape to make such a big splash, especially against the PRT and Protectorate. He had quickly realized he didn't care when the knowledge of what exactly had been the PRT's screw-up hit his ears. He had been focused on preparing to use the goldmine of PR that had been practically gift wrapped to him that he hadn't been concerned with Boogeyman. She was young and inexperienced and would fall to him all the same. He could have sent Victor to assassinate her, or let Hookwolf and his gang off their leashes a bit to deal with her.

But now…now he couldn't do anything to her. If she was killed by his hand or one of his agents the public might assume that he had ordered those idiots to go after the Hess family. Even if he didn't the PRT would jump on that bandwagon if only to give themselves the excuse they needed to try and root the Empire out. They would fail of course, but it would waste precious time and energy he couldn't afford. He would have to wait for the girl to make the next move, and judging by what limited data they had, everything pointed to it being a very big move.

"Get him out of my sight," Kaiser growled with a negligent wave of his hand towards the sobbing mess of a man before him. As a pair of burry men came a picked the sympathizer up none the too gently Kaiser considered what he was going to do with the man. Impaling him in public view would certainly give him the image he wanted to the public and his soldiers, but handing him off to the PRT might prevent the coming firestorm. It was also possible that surrendering him to the PRT would give others the idea that his organization was weak and fractured, which was not the image he wanted on the eve of a gang war.

He didn't allow himself to show his uncertainty or unease as the man was dragged out of the room, his form trailing blood that was going to have to be cleaned up later. Nobody really cared, everyone in this building had spilled their fair share of blood over the years, all in the name of the "cause".

Kaiser kept himself from snorting in derision by biting the inside of his cheek. Unlike his father, he didn't put his faith in outdated ideals that had proven their worthlessness years before he had even been born. Kaiser used it because it was a useful tool that could gather followers and had a rather large target audience in the New England area, but he held no true allegiance to the ideals that his father had tried to instill in him as he had his older sister. The only allegiance he held was to himself and his constant quest for power, nothing more and nothing less. The ideology, his subordinates, they all served his purpose and his desires and through him he enacted his will.

He knew that more a few of his subordinates were true believers like Victor and Othala, but he knew for a fact that Hookwolf saw the entire idea as nothing more than a useful way for him to pick fights. It was amusing to see that the people thought of the Changer as nothing more than a mad dog when in fact he had a deceptively clever intellect hiding behind that beast-like savagery. It was only the fact that the man had very little ambition besides fighting that Kaiser allowed him to stay to close to his inner circle.

But for every one who realized the truth, there were five fools who didn't. The ideology laid as the foundation and structure for his Empire. Without it, they would be at each other's throats as their own greed and personal grievances drove them to claim what they believed as theirs. Kaiser needed the ideology to keep everyone in line, to give them all a common enemy to fight a redirect their attention and focus away from each other.

But now he found himself stuck between the metaphorical rock and a hard place. He couldn't afford to make any waves while the Protectorate was placing him under a microscope. Any aggressive or overt action he took could set back his goals for years, decades even. Which meant he had to watch while this once in a lifetime opportunity passed before his eyes. Oh, something like this wouldn't fade from people's memories for a very long time, but it wouldn't provide nearly the same PR boost than it would if he acted on it within the first 72 hours of it airing. But even so, he couldn't afford to take any risks with the threat of the Triumvirate breathing down his neck.

At the same time, he couldn't afford the cost of letting something like this slip by either. He preached the protection of the white people to gather his support and rally the "cause". True believers would expect him to act against the minorities, to show the world that when push came to shove that he would deliver on his word. If he failed to make a demonstration, then the whispers would start. Those whose faith was weak or false would start to look towards him with a different eye. What use was his promise of protection if he was never able to follow through with it?

The only way he could see out of this mess was if he turned his rhetoric against Lung and made an example of him and his gang. If people could see that he was willing to fight the Asians that plagued the docks, then he might be able to pull through without any major losses. It wouldn't have nearly the same impact as the Shadow Stalker scandal, but it would allow him to present the illusion to the common people that he actually gave a damn about their pleading cries for protection without antagonizing the PRT too much. Oh, they would certainly come after the Empire, but they wouldn't use as nearly the same amount of force if they went after civilian targets instead.

Of course, taking on Lung was much easier said than done. The reptile was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them. He could surely recognize the position that he was in and understand that it was in his best interests to let the Empire simmer and boil with all the pressure they were under. But if they made some attacks on his properties then Lung would feel obligated to come out and fight them, if only to protect his reputation. The man was predicable like that.

But then that led to the different problem of actually _fighting_ the dragon.

Lung wasn't undefeatable, he had been sent running with his tail between his legs of multiple occasions, sometimes literally. The issue was that the combination of powers that had led to his defeat were no longer within his reach. Hookwolf would be more than willing to go against the man if only to test his physical prowess, but while he was capable of surviving Lung, he couldn't dish out enough damage against the man to be anything more than a distracting tank once Lung was sufficiently powered up.

Night and Fog could even the playing field, but they were in Boston at the moment. He could certainly call them back, but to do so would force him to go to the Gesellschaft to approve his usage of them. While the father organization of the Empire had provided them with parahuman and financial support in the past, it always came at a cost. He had worked hard to limit the Gesellschaft's involvement with the Empire since his father had passed away, and he had been quite successful. But if he were to call upon their assistance now, in his hour of desperation, then they would bleed him for as much as they could. That wasn't something that Kaiser wanted to deal with at this juncture.

Purity was really the only other cape in his arsenal that could do any appreciable damage to Lung. He could tug on her leash and bring her crawling back into her place, and while she had proven to be somewhat naïve in the past, she was reasonably intelligent. The fact that she had chosen to leave him after years of him subtly shaping her world view hinted that she did have some independent thoughts lingering in that skull of hers. She would recognize the hopelessness of his situation and hand him a heavy price tag for her support. Ultimately the same issue with the Gesellschaft, but unlike them she had the ability to deny him access to his child. That was something he couldn't afford, Aster was going to be a third generation parahuman related to one of the most powerful Blasters on the East Coast. Once she triggered she would be a valuable asset, and even if she didn't she would still be valuable for a political marriage. He couldn't afford to be denied access to her.

"Alabaster," Kaiser said. The bleached out parahuman stood from his seat in the front, much to the visible relief of those seated next to him. Kaiser could understand their unease, Alabaster's pure white skin and his lack of anything resembling pupils or irises made his very unsettling to look at for an extended period of time. The fact that the man was a sadist and regularly harmed himself to test out his torture tactics only made the normals feel even more unease towards the Breaker.

But for whatever his faults and…eccentricates, the man was fanatically loyal to the Empire and competent at his work, a pair of traits that Kaiser appreciated.

"Contact Purity, inform her that I am willing to open talks of negotiation," he said. A little wordy for something that boiled down to "go get her so we can talk", but it maintained the illusion that he still had power over her. By wording it as if he was negotiating with her, he prevented it from looking like he was crawling back to ask for her assistance in the matter.

Alabaster nodded and moved off to carry out his orders. It stung that he had to go to Purity rather than the other way around, but he was confident that he could prevent her from getting any clever ideas. He had his hooks dug deeply into her, all he had to do was tug on the right threads and she would come running back to him. Perhaps he should start by threatening to take his daughter? After all, it would only make sense that a concern father wanted to make sure his daughter was safe during such a tumultuous time. It was a risk given how attacked she was to the girl, but might put her on the backfoot enough to avoid getting her own ideas about his own access to Aster.

Purity would return to her rightful place under his command soon enough, and having to deal with an irritated woman was a preferable experience than having a favor owned to the premier European criminal syndicate.

Kaiser rose from his throne, standing tall and proud before the assembled men and women of the Empire. The platforms the twins stood on were slightly shorter than his own, giving the illusion that he was taller than they were. He rose his hand into a raised fist and cried out, "My brothers! My sisters! Victory is within our grasp. Our time has come!"

There was a great cheer from the assembly so loud that even with the smaller attendance it was still enough to make his ears ring. He let them cheer for a few seconds before subtly signaling to Menja to strike her spear against the ground. The sharp crack silenced the cheering as Kaiser continued his speech.

"Victory is at hand, but we cannot allow ourselves to let our personal desires overcome our sense of duty others have. The minorities are an insidious lot and will seek to drive you away from our goals. We cannot allow this to happen! Only once our Empire is secure will we be able to take vengeance on those who have wronged us. Stay strong and victory will be ours!" Kaiser roared as he shot his fist up into the air. The crowd before him responded in kind as they cheered at his words and promises of a new future for their city.

 _Fools_ , he thought. This was _his_ city, and the world would burn before he allowed someone else to take it. They thought this the end, no this was merely the beginning of an Empire that would engulf the coast.

He could still win this battle, it was just going to take much more finesse than he had originally thought. Recent blunders aside, he still held a strong advantage against those who would stand against him.

The dragon would be pierced by his lance, the snake would be crushed under his heel, and the enemy army would be scattered against his own.

All that would be left was to deal with the monster in the woods.

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	17. Terror 3-1

**Enjoy!**

Terror 3.1

He had been so close!

The endless void warped around his formless mass as he struggled to tear himself away from the Nightmares that kept him trapped. The Nightmares clung to him like a second skin as they struggled to feed on his fear against each other, but the other denizens of the dark were keeping their distance for the time being. Howling masses circled him cautiously like carrion birds as they eyed his weakened form. They were eager to feed, but their knowledge of who and what he had been kept them cautious. They knew not to entice his wrath like the Nightmares, so eager to feed that they turned on him in an instant. The others though, they remembered what he had once been long ago before humanity had ever risen from the bile and muck.

Back when he had been a _**GOD!**_

They remembered when civilizations collapsed into anarchy at his mere presence. When he and his legions had ravaged the cosmos like a dark tide, unstoppable and unopposable. He had fed wars, murders, and all sorts of evil that came from the twisted roots of fear. He had dwelled within the hearts of mortals as they looked into the endless _dark_ with only a few fading lights to provide them with the illusion of safety from his wrath.

He had extinguished _stars_ with a wave of his hand and darkened worlds with the passing of his horde. He had been the nightmare that kept them awake at night, the terror that chilled them to their very souls.

He had been the one to end the Golden Age and plunge the universe into the _dark_.

He had been so close to retaining that, the first step on his path to victory. There wouldn't have been any Guardians to keep him hemmed in on Earth like they had before during the Dark Ages. And as powerful as he was, Lunar Tsar wouldn't have been able to stand against him. Without Nightlight to guard him he would have fallen all the same, and the universe would have trembled at his name once more.

They would have remembered Pitch Black.

They would have remembered the Boogeyman.

He had been so close, victory had all but been within his grasp. The Guardians had been fading, unable to even provide the even smallest amounts of resistance other than empty words. All that had stood in his way had been a group of brats who didn't understand what they were facing. If they had they would have been trembling in their shoes. They should have run and hidden from the dark and the nightmares. Victory should have been _his._

But his victory had been snatched up by the jaws of defeat. His army had been scattered, his power destroyed. Everything he had built up had been swept away, all because a group of brats had been too stupid to be afraid. To recognize how hopeless their struggle was.

But they didn't.

And now here he was, trapped in the dark by his own minions. A shadow of a fragment of what he had once been. So weak that even the brats that had bested him didn't see him as they played in the snow and sand. That thought alone made him growl in anger, his entire formless shape shaking in rage. Having fun in his presence. Being happy and fearless while the Boogeyman lurked over their shoulders.

Unacceptable!

His only consolation was that their hope would crumble. Their happiness would fade and their memories darken. Their dreams would become naught by ash once the world was finished with them, and all they would know would be fear in the end. The Guardians would become nothing more than a faded dream as their childhood and belief were ground up into dust by the relentless passage of time.

Such was the way of the world.

But that knowledge was of little comfort to him as he felt his Nightmares feed. He knew all too well what would happen to him, having seen it happen to others over the course of countless eons. He would fade and splinter as all that he was, was taken from him. His existence would fade from the world and the minds of mortals and all he would be in the end was a passing nightmare. He would exist in a deathless, endless torment, unable to die but unable to truly live.

And if he were any other night terror there would be nothing that he would be able to do about it. But he wasn't some upstart like Slenderman or Bauk. They were entities of fear, forged by fear- but he _was_ Fear! To compare them to himself would be like comparing a flickering candle to the sun. And those that disagreed, those who thought they could challenge him and his power? He corrected them of their error and showed them why _he_ was the Boogeyman.

He would not fall here, not so long as fear clung to the hearts and minds of mortals. It was like he told Frost- _you can't kill fear._

All he had to do was-

Pain wracked his essence as a Fearling tore at him like a maddened beast. The creature had gone so long without feeding it decided to try and take a bite out of him. He felt a growing dread as the other creatures that inhabited the realm took notice of his weakness and started to drift far closer than he would have liked. He could deal with his Nightmares, but there were some beings here that he would rather not deal with in his weakened state. Those like Lermantoff Serpent might start to get foolish notions about their place in his hierarchy.

All he had to do was find someplace to rest for a time while he regained his strength. Trying to hide in the mortal realm was out of the question. Lunar Tsar and the Guardians would be keeping a close eye for any of his activity. His lair had all but collapsed with his humiliating defeat, which didn't really leave him with man-

Something was wrong.

Had he been any other being he wouldn't have been able to notice it, but he was as attuned to the Realm of Shadow as Mansnoozie was to the Island of the Sleepy Sands. Though unlike Mansnoozie he hadn't made his realm, he had merely taken it from the mindless inhabitants that now made up his armies. He could feel the currents and patterns of the dark shift and twist as something pushed against the barrier between it and the mortal realm. The ripple traced along the barest edge of his domain like a pebble skimming a pond. Only the outermost parts of his domain were effected, in the space that mixed his realm with the material world, like two links holding a chain together, it was that space that allowed him to travel to and from the physical world.

Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't be that concerning. His domain was quite malleable, and it wasn't uncommon for occasional outside forces to interfere or manipulate the outer edges of the space. He would have just brushed it off as another hedge-wizard who thought they were Merlin, but with his recent defeat at the hands of the Guardians, he couldn't afford to ignore the occurrence. For all he knew they were trying to pierce his realm and drive him even further into the darkness.

They had tried such tactics before during their Dark Ages in an attempt to weed him out of his realm and force a fight, but his power back then had been enough to rebuff such advances. But now attempting to do so would require much more concentration and effort in his weaker state. He could need to interfere now before it got out of hand.

Pitch neared the point of impact cautiously, being careful not to disturb the barrier too much. The edge of his space was flimsy enough that a single tug could break it, another consequence of his defeat. The Realm of Shadows was an extension of his will and a reflection of his health and being. During times like this, the barriers that separated the two worlds would weaken and intermingle like a tide against the shore. At this stage, one wrong move could breach the barrier and send him flying out into the mortal realm. That was the last thing he needed while the Guardians were on high alert.

Another rippled passed through the veil with all the subtly of a brick. It was clear to Pitch that whoever was doing this had no conception of what they were actually interfering with. To his relief that ruled out the Guardians as the interlopers, as anything they did would never be this ham-fisted or chaotic, nor would any spirit who had the barest understanding of their own magic. A small comfort though, since that meant that he didn't know who was messing with the Realm of Shadows. If he were in the state to do so, he would make sure to teach them what happens when you mess with something you don't understand. He couldn't afford to let the rest of the supernatural community think he was so weak that he would allow a mere mortal to mess with his domain.

The fact that he _was_ that weak was entirely beside the point-

Pitch Black jerked as something shattered the barrier.

The interloper had pierced through the veil like a needle, and it was at that moment that he realized something was very wrong. Pitch had spent eons combating magic, even before his time as the Nightmare King. He knew things about magic that no mortal and very few spirits could even begin to understand. Only Lunar Tsar had an even remotely comparable understanding of the mechanics of magic. But what was happening now was so basic even a first-year wizard could understand what was happening.

Magic tended to flow from place to place like water, always rippling and changing, but it most cases magic would always flow to fill in gaps. Places like Stonehenge and Machu Picchu were areas that for whatever reason, experienced a loss of ambient magic power and in an attempt to correct the error, magic would flood into the region. The location would eventually become a hotspot of magical powers and abilities. And right now, that tiny hole might as well have been a bottomless pit.

Pitch had never seen such stagnant or weak magic before. The only thing he could compare it to were the magic null bombs that had been developed to combat him near the fall of the Golden Age and compared this void they might have well been soaked in magic.

Pitch struggled against the vortex like pull that formed in response to the breaching. He could feel Nightmares and Fearlings alike being pulled into the vortex, unable to resist the intense pull as the magic of his realm flowed to into the now much larger hole in an attempt to correct the imbalance. He was just barely able to keep his formless shape out of the event horizon as it pulled on him with a nearly inexhaustible grip.

Then he felt the second breach.

Unlike the first, the source of this tear was far more familiar. It was surgical and precise, as though whoever was making it knew exactly what they were doing. As the burning energy approached his essence, Pitch could recognize the taint on the magic that he knew all too well. How could he not remember the man that he spent an eternity cursing out for assisting with his first imprisonment?

 _Lunar Tsar!_

A wave of pure power slammed into his form and shattered his tenuous grip on the realm. He could feel his essence burning as the Man in the Moon's lunar energy slammed into him like a tidal wave. The brat was trying to force him through the breach and seal him away on some forsaken rock for the rest of eternity!

Pitch snarled as he struggled not only against the black hole-like pull of the breach but against the extremely potent energies of the Man in the Moon. He knew that it was a losing battle at best, the Man in the Moon's strength alone assured that. He hadn't just wanted to turn the boy into his nightmare prince because of his innocence, but because the boy also inherited a tremendous about of magical power and talent from his parents, two of the few people that had actually hurt him in eternities gone by. Without his full power, he couldn't resist both forces at once.

His form shot through the breach like a bullet as he slammed into…something. It was alien and unfamiliar to the entity of fear. But the mere fact that whatever it was wasn't trying to instinctively repulse him with any form of magic told him one of two things. One, this thing had no conception of who he was, or it had no magic to speak of or both. Even humans could instinctively use magic to repel malignant supernatural forces like himself. It had been something that had always vexed him in his weakened state because honestly, did mortals really think a _nightlight_ would be able to keep him away?

But Pitch had no time to contemplate that fact as another wave of Lunar Tsar's power slammed into him, forcing him even deeper into the unfamiliar creature. He could feel the dull flesh being torn apart by his form and his minions as the creature's defenseless form was torn into by some of the darkest forms of magic ever to exist. Pitch could feel the creature's fear and uncertainty of the situation at hand as he was driven into it like a splinter.

Whatever the creature was, it was aware of what was happening to it, or at the very least knew that something was wrong. It lacked a true soul for Pitch to think of it as a living, thinking creature, and the best comparison that he could come up with was that it was more akin to a drone or a particularly clever machine, like that Djinni robot that North had made a few centuries ago.

Not that he would have cared whether it was truly alive or not, but it was much harder to try and mentally fight a creature that possessed the even the merest sliver of a soul rather than an empty machine. But even with this advantage, the creature was vast and he was weakened. It certainly didn't help that Lunar Tsar was trying to push him even further away from the breach. A breach that he could now see was being sewed up by the moon brat's magic. He tried to resist the multiple forces pushing him farther into the being in one last desperate attempt to reach the breach before it closed, but he knew it was a lost cause. Either he could let even more of his power be burned up by Lunar Tsar or he could try and escape.

Realizing he couldn't go up, Pitch chose to go down. He shot down into the belly of the beast like a rocket, the force that had previously conspired against him now working to assist him. And now he could feel something else, something terrified beyond rational thought. He could feel the fear calling out to him, inviting him to feed and grow. Even in this place of stale and static magic, fear was _his._

The fear of a child.

An elder child, but a child none the less. He could see the terror now, the terror of death and the inevitable end. A delightful fear in one so young. While the creature's fear had sated him some, it was incapable of feeling true terror. Oh, it could feel fear and concern for its situation, but it was far too organized and restricted to experience terror. But the child's fear, oh that might as well have been the ringing of a dinner gong to him. The creature seemed to be funneling his form towards the girl as if it was somehow connected to her. Pitch obliged the creature as he honed in on his target, eager to regain even the smallest scrap of his power one more.

But once Pitch moved in closer he realized his mistake. In her near death state, the child's spirit had become unanchored to her body and floated on the currents and eddies of magic that surrounded her form.

And he was about to hit it.

Under any other circumstances, it wouldn't have mattered. A single spirit would have been utterly inconsequential to him, even in his weakened state. He could have flicked it into a thousand fragments or if he wanted to be vindictive he could have corrupted her into a vengeful ghost. Those were always fun to sic on the mortals.

But the sheer amount of magic that was being channeled towards her spirit was warping it, making it more malleable, just as his form was. Her spirit was absorbing the magic like a sponge in such a massive amount that if she lived he wouldn't have been surprised if she gained some talent in sorcery.

But none of that was his concern as he slammed into her with the force of a meteorite. Pitch would have screamed if he had a physical body. His entire form was burning and twisting as he and the child's spirit melded together like two colors of paint being mixed together.

He thrashed and tore and pulled with all the might he could muster as he tried to free himself from the entanglement that he had found himself in, but it was all for naught. He was trying to resist a literal waterfall of magic that was being poured upon them, crushing their very existences together.

 _No!_ He/She/They thought desperately as terror overtook them. If He/She/They pulled, He/She/They might be able to-

Another wave of Lunar Tsar's power blasted into He/She/They, smashing aside whatever pitiful resistance that had been gathered.

 _LUNAR TSAR!_

* * *

Boogeyman's eyes shot open in shock as she gasped out of pure reflex more than a need for oxygen. Her eyes darted around the room as her chair groaned under her iron grip. Once she realized that nothing was wrong she allowed herself to settle back down into her seat. She eased up her grip on her chair, ignoring the dents that she had just put into it as she tried to calm herself down.

"Just a nightmare," she muttered under her breath as she rubbed her forehead. She didn't need to sleep, not anymore, but it helped pass time during the day when she couldn't do much and allowed her to take a break once in a while. The nightmares had been constant, but there was something about them that nagged at her. The answer to whatever they meant eluded her, like a stick in a pond the more she tried to reach for it, the farther away it got.

She couldn't help but let out a giggle at the thought of her, someone who literally lived off of fear and nightmares still getting nightmares. Honestly, the best solution to the problem would be to just stop sleeping. It wasn't as if she actually needed to sleep anymore. She allowed herself to do so because it meant she wouldn't have to spend hours staring at a screen, waiting for the sun to go down. It was something she could do to just let her mind relax and shut down for a time.

At any rate, she could see that the sun was starting to set, and such thoughts were cast aside to focus on more important details. The television that she had left on was still spouting more about the Shadow Stalker scandal, something that it had been doing since she had aired the PRT's dirty laundry about a day and a half ago. Boogeyman flicked through the channels in an attempt to find something that might catch her eye.

"-gressman Stein has joined the push for a governmental inquiry into the PRT's activities-"

"…these really the kind of people we want patrolling our streets?"

"Brandish of New Wave is calling this 'a travesty of hero accountability' and…"

"Director Piggot had declined to make a statement…"

Boogeyman turned off the television with a soft click. There was nothing there that she hadn't already seen before. She set the remote down and took in her surroundings with a deep breath. She wasn't sure why, but the previously standard abandoned warehouse had started to…warp for a lack of a better term.

Walls were starting to curve around and turn from the previously structured order to a much more nonsensical design. It had been a slow creeping thing that she hadn't taken notice of at first, but now that the changes had become more pronounced they couldn't help but draw her eyes. Really it wasn't anything major, and the outside of the building still looked exactly the same, but it was something worth noting. An aspect of her power perhaps? Did she have a Shaker power that warped the environment around her?

"Focus," Boogeyman muttered as she tore her contemplative gaze away from the curving walls. She could let her internal interior decorator out later, right now she still had plans to go over and a rendezvous to get to.

The situation in the city was _relatively_ stable. At the very least the gangs weren't outright fighting on the streets. The tension was still there, though. The pressure between the gangs and Protectorate had been building for something and while she had added some fuel to the fire, all she had really was bring the tension back into focus to the public. There was going to be a gang war eventually, with or without her inference, she just wanted to make sure that the civilians were out of the line of fire and that the gangs would get what was coming to them.

And with how the Protectorate was scrambling for a response to the revelation of Shadow Stalker's activates, it would end up falling on her shoulders to fix the mess they had left to rot and grow. Perhaps if she started to show them up enough they might actually get off their asses and do their jobs for once.

Boogeyman snorted. The thought of the local Protectorate actually doing something constructive was laughable. At best, they would schedule half a dozen more publicity stunts to try and dig themselves out of the hole they had created.

Because that was more important than actually doing their jobs.

Though in all honestly, she had been somewhat taken back by the enormity of the backlash the local PRT and Protectorate had gotten from the Shadow Stalker fiasco. She had known that such a scandal would have huge repercussions, but while it was easy to mentally envision that, it was a quite different to see people as powerful as state senators and congressmen getting involved. Powerful people were calling for an investigation of not only the local Protectorate, but they wanted to but nationwide Ward teams under scrutiny as well. Boogeyman wasn't sure if the motions would actually get anywhere, but the more people talked about the scandal, the less they would trust in the rose tinted image the Protectorate provided them. The local team's approval rating was at an all-time low if a few informal polls were to be believed.

The PRT was desperately trying to throw the blame off themselves and onto Winslow, but for all they could try, they couldn't break the narrative that had grown like a malignant cancer. Their attempts to deny that they had known about Shadow Stalker's activities was only making people believe that they were informed of her activities even more- the Streisand effect.

The parents of Winslow were in total uproar towards the PRT and the school administration. The fact that their children had been going to school with a sadistic Ward had incensed more than a few individuals. Not only that but as more of Winslow's failings as a school were being brought to light, more people were starting to question the reliability of the place as an institution of learning.

Though Boogeyman was certain that the media was playing up the level of control the gangs had over the school. When she had gone to Winslow as Taylor she had never really seen any overt gang activity aside from a show of colors or the occasional scuffle, but it wasn't like she had gone out and looked for the gangs at the time either. At any rate, it almost irrelevant what was true or not, the parents wanted blood and they weren't taking no for an answer. Even more than a few of the Arcadia and Immaculata parents were baying for the incompetents that let the situation get this out of hand.

Winslow had been closed down for the time being while their staff and administration were being put through a thorough investigation. They were still looking through files from what the news said, but they had already brought the principal up on charges. A smile had been brought to her lips at the sight of Blackwell being arrested on charges of negligence, embezzlement, and as an accomplice to murder along with a slew of other charges. And given the public's opinion on the matter, it wasn't likely that she was going to be able to wiggle her way out of this one. Really, it was amusing how quickly the PRT was to turn if given the option of getting bad PR. While nothing official had been released by the local Director, it was clear that some of the more PRT friendly news stations were trying to load as much as the blame onto the school as they could. It wouldn't help them in the end, but it was still fun to watch everyone struggle against each other in an attempt to get out of the pit they had dug themselves into.

 _Lack of evidence isn't going to save you this time, Janice_ , Boogeyman thought with no small amount of glee. Perhaps she should give her former principal a visit before this was all over. It would be more than a little amusing to see the former educator on the back foot for once. To see her smug and self-assured face crumble into despair as she realized the full implications of what was happening to her. It was highly unlikely that the PRT would let their scapegoat get off easily, she would likely to be shipped off the prison.

But such indulgences would have to wait for when she wasn't so busy. The city was a powder keg of violence and resentment that was threatening to blow at any moment. The Empire had released an "official statement" that the attack on the Hess family had not been a sanctioned hate crime as if being sanctioned would make a hate crime any better. They had even gone as far to leave the man who had let the Nazis she had dispatched know the identity of the Hess family gift wrapped on the PRT's doorstep.

It was clear that Kaiser was trying to find a way out of the corner that his idiotic foot soldiers had backed him into, but it was a futile effort. The simple fact was that Kaiser was too tangled up in his gang's unifying narrative to convince the public that this wasn't in part his fault. And even if it actually was an unsanctioned hate crime, all it proved was that the man couldn't control his gang. The Empire was bleeding, and the sharks could smell the blood in the water.

It was the beginning of the end for the Empire, even if they didn't want to admit it. Oh, they still had life in them, but they were going to die. It would be a slow insidious thing that crept up on them inch by inch. Everything they built would slowly crumble around them as their shining white empire was snatched into the darkness. And by the time they realized what was happening it would be too late.

Boogeyman blamed her mother for her poetic side.

But while the attempt on the Hess family's lives had certainly forced the Empire on the backfoot, it had also forced Boogeyman to reevaluate her strategy. Her original plan had been to focus her efforts on sabotaging the Empire's operations as they tried to expand and capitalize on the propaganda that the Shadow Stalker situation provided them. She would have pushed them back and deny them any opportunity to expand or grow in response to the event. She would sow the seeds of doubt into their follower's minds about their conviction that the Empire could "protect" them. And once their fear sprouted and spread there would have been little, if anything, that the Empire could do to stop it.

That certainly was still a cornerstone of her plan, but the fact was that the Empire was keeping most of their actives close to their chests and were avoiding making any waves that might bring more attention to them.

She could try to make a push against them, but pushing them into an even tighter corner might make them do something foolish. When she did make her more against them it would have to sufficiently weaken them so that any retaliation they made wouldn't result in entire city blocks being demolished.

For the time being, it served her purposes to let the Empire stew for a bit longer. Every hour they did nothing was another hour of their followers losing faith in their leader's promises. Kaiser had always promised to protect the decent whites from the "sub-human filth", and now it was coming to bite him in the ass. Promises that couldn't be fulfilled weren't conducive to garnering public support.

Boogeyman doubted that the truly loyal members of the Empire would leave, they were far too ingrained with the idea of racial superiority to even consider that they might be wrong. But having the general populace lose their faith in the Empire's protection would go a long way to vilifying them. People would be far less likely to protest to her brutal methods if they recognized how monstrous the Empire actually was. All she had to do was strip away their belief and faith and show them the reality of the world.

Boogeyman cast that line of thought aside as she stood up from her seat. There was no point in wasting more time contemplating the Empire's destruction. She would simply have to be patient. She turned towards a section of the wall where she had placed a rather large map of the city. She had pinned the map up with a few pushpins to hold it in place against the wood. Bands of string had been placed up outlining the territory of the various gangs. Despite her victory against the Merchants she still held a very small portion of the city, only a few blocks of the worst developed districts of the city.

But it was a start and that was what was important. As the old saying went, Rome wasn't built in a day. She could name independent and Protectorate heroes who had been working as long as she had been alive, if not longer, who had done less to the villains and criminals. The rate at which villains escaped custody was a disturbing number and one that the Protectorate made sure to keep well away from the public eye.

In the last twenty years, the only major villains from the Bay who had been successfully incarcerated were a few rank and file of the Teeth after the Slaughterhouse had finished with them and Marquis, who had been captured by New Wave, or the Brockton Bay Brigade as they had been known back then. A few minor independents had been captured, mostly from the scattered Asian gangs prior to Lung's arrival, but it was still a distressingly small amount. The number didn't even reach the double digits, a fact that was never really brought up when the Protectorate talked about all their hard work at keeping the city safe.

"Fools," Boogeyman muttered under her breath as she turned her attention back to the map. The Empire controlled much of the city, far too much if you asked her. They had an iron grip around the Commercial District and the Downtown Coast with a few tendrils digging into the Docks South. The Azn Bad Boyz were the undisputed rulers of the Docks and the Trainyards, a rather impressive amount of territory considering they only had three capes on their roster. From what she could tell, Coil didn't really hold territory like any of the other villains, but he apparently had a very strong presence in the Downtown districts of the city, brushing right up against the areas that the PRT and Protectorate actually cared about. After all, Downtown was where most of the city's money was made and where Arcadia and their precious Wards were located.

 _It's not like the_ other _parts of the city had anything of value,_ Boogeyman thought with a snort. Still, putting aside the PRT and Protectorate's ineffectiveness, something about Coil just irked her.

Compared to the other gangs he was a virtual unknown in terms of parahuman powers. Some speculated that he didn't even have powers and was just wealthy enough to buy professional mercenaries and Tinker tech weapons. He was considered more of an irritant that an actual player to the local law enforcement and the gangs and yet…

Boogeyman couldn't quite put her finger on what it was about the masked villain that bothered her so. Maybe it was just because of her experience with the Merchants had taught her the value of intelligence as she had simply taken those lessons to heart. But one didn't hire professional mercenaries without some long-term plan and some serious money to back it up. Boogeyman didn't know what hiring mercenaries cost, but she had learned from her father through osmosis that hiring a professional could get expensive. Having at least two or three dozen well-trained men on hand had to amount to a rather large price tag.

So where was he getting his money?

Looking at the map Boogeyman realized something that had slipped her notice at first. Coil didn't have any forms of income that she could see knew of. The Empire and the ABB made their money off of drugs, prostitution, weapon smuggling and a variety of other sources of illegal income. But Coil didn't seem to partake in any of those illegal activities in any considerable degree, and certainly not enough to sustain a criminal empire for any length of time.

Kaiser, Lung and even now deceased Skidmark made sense to her. They wanted to gather power and wealth and were willing to do anything to get it, even if it meant stooping to the lowest of the low and then grabbing a shovel and digging even deeper. One didn't allow themselves to become a Nazi if they were concerned about things like morality.

So as disgusting as their practices were, Boogeyman at the very least understood what they were trying to accomplish and how they went about doing so. But Coil, Coil was a mystery. He was a virtual unknown that had managed to survive in Brockton Bay, a city that had more capes per capita than most places in the United States. Boogeyman didn't understand what Coil was doing and she didn't like that.

She was going to have to rectify that.

 _Easier said than done,_ Boogeyman thought with a grumble as she walked back over to her chair, twisting the piece of furniture around until it was facing the map. She plopped herself down and stared at the map with a contemplative expression, chin resting against the palm of her hand. She was going to have to find and…question one of Coil's mercenaries but trying to find one of them was going to be difficult. They weren't like Empire or ABB members who walked down the street with their gang colors emblazoned for the world to see. These were professionals who only stayed as long as they needed to before slinking back off into the shadows.

 _They hide in our domain._

Boogeyman felt her fist curl at the stray thought. If Coil thought that he could hide by slithering in the shadows, then she would just have to show him the error of his ways. Because no matter how deep he dug, there would be no place that the shadows touched that he would be able to hide from her.

But she was going to have to put that on hold for another day, she had a rendezvous to make and a hero to meet.

"Stay here," Boogeyman ordered to her assembled Nightmares as she rose from her seat. She didn't bother waiting for their agreement before she dove into a shadow.

Hopefully, this would go better than her conversation with Miss Militia.

She was still somewhat shaken by whatever had happened to her in that apartment building. It had left her as quickly as it had come, but she couldn't stop remembering the tightening of her chest as something twisted inside of her. If she didn't know any better she would have thought that it was because she couldn't breathe, but she knew that she didn't have to do that anymore.

Whatever it had been it had reminded her that she wasn't immortal and that she could still be hurt. Even if a bullet to the head couldn't put her down that didn't mean whatever _that_ had been couldn't.

Boogeyman tried to push such thoughts away she moved towards where she would meet her target. If this worked she would have a parahuman to add to her ranks of Nightmares. If not, well…

There were always other options.

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	18. Terror 3-a

**Enjoy!**

Terror 3.a

Victoria Dallon was upset, and when Victoria Dallon was upset gangbangers tended to come down with broken bones. The fact that the source of her ire was beyond her reach at the moment only incensed her even more.

Glory Girl had always known that Shadow Stalker was a bitch, but she had never in a million years thought that she would have been capable of what she did. Torturing a civilian just for the fun of it? That was something that Glory Girl would have expected from the rapists and murders that she put away, not from a Ward.

Dean had tried to give her some form of explanation as to why Shadow Stalker's behavior hadn't been caught or stopped, but she hung up on him. Had it been petty? Perhaps. But the fact that her boyfr- ex-boyfriend hadn't been able to detect Sophia's psychotic behavior given his ability to sense emotional states, Glory Girl was understandably upset at him. She couldn't begin to imagine how he couldn't have known about Sophia's instability.

 _Had he always known?_ The dark thought entered her mind, unbidden by any external stimuli. It would certainly make more sense that he had known and just ignored the issue rather than him not realizing what was going on. As much as Dean like to portray himself as a white knight, she knew he didn't like to interfere with other people's business. He tended to remain passive in situations that might benefit from his interference, believing that his powers constituted an invasion of privacy. It was one of the things that Glory Girl had tried change about him by pushing him out of his comfort zone, but he had remained adamant on his neutrality.

 _Now look where it's got you,_ Glory Girl thought with a brief flare of fury.

But as angry as she was, it was nothing compared to the raging inferno that her mother had become when the news hit her. Since then her mom had been on a warpath and had been gunning for putting the local Protectorate's head on a pike. A parahuman using their status to get away with literal murder was the very situation that New Wave had been founded to prevent.

Of course, it wasn't as if they could just ignore the Protectorate while the threat of a full-blown gang war loomed on the horizon. Aunt Sarah and Uncle Neil were dealing with keeping New Wave's image separate from the Protectorate while simultaneously trying to coordinate with them against the gangs. Her mom was trying to gather up steam for a lawsuit against the people who had been involved with the Shadow Stalker debacle so the Protectorate couldn't just sweep them under all under the rug and use the Winslow administration as scapegoats.

Arcadia had been forced to close as it and the other schools held a meeting to determine how they were going to sort out the Winslow mess. With most of the administration and the teachers being suspended pending a full-scale investigation the gang-ridden school had been forced to close. That meant that the three other high schools in the city had to deal with an influx of about one to two thousand students that were seeking education sources.

Glory Girl couldn't say she disliked the situation that much since she was getting a free week off of school. It gave her some more free time to go on patrols, which was exactly what New Wave needed to do while the city was in near turmoil. It had proven difficult to organize their patrols in such a way that would allow them to effectively cover the city while simultaneously avoiding being associated with the Protectorate. Harder said than done given that the Protectorate had been patrolling the more at risk neighborhoods to try and quell any budding unrest.

While the tensions between the Empire and ABB had skyrocketed, they had been oddly restrained the last few nights. What she had found was that the more independent criminals were coming out in full force while the calm lasted and they didn't have to worry about an army of skinheads or a serial suicide bomber ruining their day.

That wasn't to say that all gang activity had outright stopped, but she had found very few instances of the gangs committing obvious criminal acts.

Though the gang's meager presence wasn't her concern this night. She had been spending the last few days tracking a rapist who had been preying on women near the edge of Downtown. She had found the first victim by pure chance, but the woman's torn clothing and terrified and vacant gaze made it clear as to what had happened. After having talked to one of New Wave's contacts in the police force she had found that the unfortunate woman hadn't been his only the man's only victim and that they had three rapes and one attempted rape attributed to him.

The victim's descriptions weren't much to go on, the man apparently wore a ski mask to hide his identity and the clothing that he had been wearing was different each time. Leaving her with very little to go off of, Glory Girl had decided that the best course of action was to simply patrol the area that he had been sulking about and hope that she would be able to find him before he found a new victim.

Glory Girl shivered as a cold breeze swept over her form. As much as she liked her costume, it didn't provide much in the form of environmental protection. As she looked down at the buildings below she could see an almost physical divide between the Downtown area and the Docks South. The bright and modern looking Downtown streets were a sharp contrast to the much duller and older buildings of the Docks South. That wasn't to say that the Docks South was a very bad neighborhood compared to the buildings around the train yards, but there was a very clear distinction between the two areas of the city.

Glory Girl paused as a faint noise whispered across the wind. It was almost too faint to hear, but as she lowered herself closer to the street level she could make out exactly what it was.

A woman. Screaming for help.

Glory Girl shot off in the direction of the screams, her form blazing with unconstrained anger. Her mouth set into an angry snarl as she saw a few windows slide shut as the residents tried to block out the noise as if by simply ignoring it they could pretend that nothing was wrong.

As Glory Girl swung around a corner at high speeds she forced herself to come to a halt in midair that the sight before her.

A young woman who didn't look much older than her was lying on the ground, her expression absolutely terrified as she screamed her lungs out. Her simple blouse and jeans were stained with muck and grime as she tried to drag herself away from the man before her. The man was wrapped in a set of nondescript clothes and wouldn't have stood out that much if it wasn't for the ski mask covering his face. The faint glint of a blade signaled that he was armed, which was probably how he cowed his victims into submission.

Not that it would do him much good against her invulnerability.

Glory Girl let her control of her aura fall away as she blasted the alleyway with a good dose of fear. She felt a brief pang of regret for terrifying the woman, but she was already scared out her mind anyway so it wasn't like it was going to get any worse.

"Hey ugly," Glory Girl snarled, her beautiful face warped with anger and rage.

The man twisted around at the sound of her voice, and what little she could see of his face through the mask was already pale and afraid. The man's eyes widened as his terrified brain connected the dots between her appearance and what was about to happen to him.

"Oh, s-"

The man didn't get to finish his well-justified expiative as Glory Girl exploded forward with the speed of a bullet, wrapping her hands around his throat like a vice. The man barely had time to drop his knife and reflexive try to remove her grip when Glory Girl shot up into the sky, carrying the man with her. In the corner of her eye she could see a thick shadow twist and writhe, but she marked it as unimportant as she focused on the scum before her.

"You get off on it, don't you?" Glory Girl asked as the man choked and squirmed in her immovable grip. She wrapped her hand around the man's ski mask and tore it off, but instead of the face of a monster, all she saw was a regular guy. There was no defining feature that marked him as evil or criminal, but in a way, that was even more disappointing. It was one thing when a monster wanted to hurt or kill you, but to see a human being willingly resort to committing such acts was something that enraged her like little else could.

"You like seeing them helpless?" Glory Girl growled as she dropped him onto a rooftop with a little more force than what was required. She heard a pop or two that signified that one of his ribs had snapped from the impact. As she lowered herself down the man's level, he pulled himself up, eyes still wide with fright and a thin sheen of sweat covering his face as he took a swing at her. Glory Girl did nothing as the fist impacted her sternum, aside from smiling nastily as the man started screaming from broken fingers.

 _The idiot didn't even have the decency to throw a good punch_ , Glory Girl thought as she watched him cradle his broken thumb that had been inside his fist. As the man looked back up Glory Girl took a swing of her own and watched with satisfaction as the man's jaw shattered under the impact, blood and teeth flying out from his mouth as he fell to the ground screaming. His screams came across as wet gurgles as he tried to move his lower jaw.

"Sucks, doesn't it?" Glory Girl asked as she towered over the man's whimpering form. The man was in bad shape but unless his rib punctured a lung he wasn't going to die anytime soon. But now that her rage had subsided a little bit, Glory Girl recognized that she might have gone a little too far with the guy. But he was a rapist and had tried to take a swing at her, no matter how ineffective it had been.

Still, she was going to have to call Ames and beg her to heal the man up a little bit before she turned him in. Ames would probably tell her to be more careful and resist at first, but her sister always helped her when she asked really nicely.

Amy was nice like that.

A slow clapping sound wrenched Glory Girl from her thoughts. She whipped her head around to the source of the sound and felt her breath catch in her throat.

Boogeyman sat on the brick outcropping of the building a mere five feet away and she hadn't even noticed her presence. While Glory Girl mentally berated herself for not paying more attention to her surroundings, she allowed her feet to leave the ground as she unleashed her fear aura at full blast. She heard the rapist whimper behind her, but much to her frustration all Boogeyman did was raise a hairless eye ridge in response.

"I hope you're not trying to scare me," Boogeyman said in a bored tone, completely unphased by the blonde bombshell's use of her power. Glory Girl had to resist the urge to growl. It wasn't as if people hadn't overcome her aura in the past, but for one to do it so effortlessly…

"What do you want?" Glory Girl asked with a wary expression. New Wave had found themselves divided on Boogeyman and her position in the cape community. On one hand, she represented what New Wave wanted to avoid, a cape that was accountable to nobody and flaunted the rules and laws without a second thought. On the other hand, her methods, while brutal and violent, had proven to be effective. The people who lived in the former Merchant territory could now walk down the street without worrying of being mugged by a druggie after the sun went down.

They hadn't decided how they should classify her as and had taken a wait and see approach. If Boogeyman proved to be villainous then they would take her down without hesitation, but as it was she hadn't done anything yet to harm any civilians. She was clearly a loose cannon that would have to be brought in eventually, but better to focus on the real threats of the Empire and ABB than making a new enemy.

"You know, I've met a few criminals who have quite the fear of you," Boogeyman said, her voice tinged with approval.

"What do you want?" Glory Girl asked again, this time much more firmly. She kept her posture tense and ready to move at a moment's notice. She didn't think that Boogeyman would attack her, but she did have a confrontation with Miss Militia from what she heard, and it didn't end well for the Blaster.

"I wanted to talk to you," Boogeyman said with a small smile as she leaned back against the open air. There was a relaxed grace to the woman's movements as if they were having a chat in a coffee shop rather than on the roof of a building while a serial rapist was mewling in pain behind them.

"With me?" Glory Girl asked warily as she eyed the cape. She let her aura fall away, realizing there was no point trying to use it to scare Boogeyman anymore. She still kept herself at the ready to paste the woman into the ground if she tried anything. Glory Girl didn't think she would seeing as the only hero she had attacked so far was that psycho Shadow Stalker, but being blonde didn't mean that she was stupid. "Why?"

"To make an offer," Boogeyman said as she stood up with an alien grace that set Glory Girl's teeth on edge. It took every ounce of her willpower to keep herself from slamming into the parahuman at the sudden movement. Boogeyman paused as she eyed her with those yellow orbs that sent chills down her spine.

"What kind of offer?" Glory Girl asked. There was no way that she would agree to whatever the woman was offering, but it didn't hurt to listen. It might give her some insight to how the woman's mind worked. Holding back now might help New Wave if they ever had to engage her in the future.

"Nothing crazy," Boogeyman assured her as she circled the rooftop, setting Glory Girl on edge at the complete lack of concern the parahuman was giving her. While Glory Girl knew that she wasn't the strongest parahuman in the city, she was still pretty high up there. Her forcefield's nigh invulnerability had let her engage with the like of Hookwolf and Lung. To have a cape be so dismissive of her power and strength stoked some of her irritation.

"I want you to join me in my fight against the gangs," Boogeyman said, stopping and whirling around to directly face the floating woman. It took everything Glory Girl had to keep herself from gaping on the spot like an idiot. Out of all the things she had expected Boogeyman to ask, that wasn't one of them. A healing from Panacea. Sharing of whatever intelligence New Wave happened to have. But this?

"You must be joking," Glory Girl blurted out undiplomatically as she let her feet set down on the gravelly roof, too surprised to focus on flying.

Boogeyman just raised one of her hairless eye ridges. "I assure you I am not," she said in a calm collected tone that reminded Glory Girl of the times her teachers had called her blurting out what was on the top of her mind and wording it in such a way that made her sound stupid.

"Why would I work with _you?"_ Glory Girl asked, none the too kindly. If this cape thought that she would betray her family, betray everything that she had ever stood for, all for a chance to get a better spotlight then she was going to have to teach her a thing or two.

"Perhaps that fact that we're so similar?" Boogeyman asked with a careless shrug.

"I'm nothing like you," Glory Girl said with a snarl as her golden locks fell around her twisted expression like a frame. While she certainly appreciated what Boogeyman was doing to the gangs, she didn't want to throw her support behind her. She was a cape that answered to nobody and had decided for herself that she had the power of judge, jury, and executioner. No matter how much good she did she would remain as a poster girl for New Wave's message of cape accountability.

"I'd say he'd disagree," Boogeyman commented as she looked down to the rapist who had been trying to wiggle his way out of their field of view. Not that he had gotten very far, the blinding pain from his broken ribs severely hampered his mobility as he tried to claw his way to the access hatch for the roof with his unbroken hand. Glory Girl wasn't sure what his plan was once he reached it, there was no way he would be able to climb down that small ladder in his current condition, and it wasn't as if they wouldn't notice the screeching of the rusted metal as he tried to pry it open.

"…That's different," Glory Girl argued as she eyed the man's trail of crimson fluid. But even as she denied it, she couldn't help but hear some traitorous whispers in the back of her mind telling her that it wasn't different, no matter what she said.

"Oh?" Boogeyman asked with what appeared to be genuine curiosity. "So, because your sister covers up your tracks that means that it doesn't matter?"

"Yeah, it is different," Glory Girl said with a new conviction. She wasn't like Boogeyman, she didn't kill her enemies or leave them on the ground like broken toys. She just called Ames and had her heal them up. It wasn't like anyone would know and the criminals would learn their lesson.

Boogeyman said nothing in response to her rebuttal. Instead, she just stared at her with those freakishly yellow eyes that seemed to be looking at something beyond her face and skin, as if she was tearing away they things that made her, well her, and was trying to get into the gooey center of her person.

"So, you're willing to risk your sister's life?" Boogeyman asked with a raised eye ridge.

Glory Girl saw red.

 _Nobody_ threatened her sister and got away with it.

Glory Girl leaped forward, arms outstretched and lips twisted into an angry snarl. For a split second, she swore she saw Boogeyman's eyes widen in surprise, but the look of shock was hidden under a mask of boredom so quickly that she might have imagined it. When her fist was mere inches away from plastering the capes' internal organs against brick Glory Girl suddenly found herself face to face with empty air.

Her fist struck the rooftop, cracking the structure like a child's toy. A spider web of cracks erupted from here her fist impacted as if a sledgehammer had been brought to the building.

" _That_ was uncalled for."

Glory Girl whirled around to see Boogeyman relaxing against the other side of the building without a care in the world. She didn't even look the slightest bit frightened by the threat of being put into a full body cast.

"You threatened my sister," Glory Girl screamed out between her gnashing teeth. Did she not think that she cared about Amy? That any two-bit thug could just threaten her to her very face without getting punished?

Boogeyman gave her a genuinely confused look as if she didn't understand what Glory Girl was talking about. Suddenly the woman's eyes sparked with recognition and she gave her a slight smile. "Ah, you misunderstand Glory Girl. I wasn't threatening dear Amy Dallon's life. I was merely pointing out how much you put her at risk by involving her in this situation," Boogeyman said with a wave of her hand to indicate the still crawling rapist.

"What are you talking about?" Glory Girl asked, the tiniest amount of her blinding rage bleeding off as she listened to whatever excuse Boogeyman had. There was no reason to believe what Boogeyman was saying, but if there was the slightest threat to her sister's wellbeing then she would make sure to deal with it.

"You beat these criminals within an inch of their life to teach them a lesson," Boogeyman said with a voice that emoted nothing but approval. "But then you bring your sister in to heal them all up, and you take away whatever impact your lesson might have had. It's not much of a punishment if you give them a reward afterward."

"And how is that supposed to put Panacea in danger?" Glory Girl asked with far less hostility than she had been exerting a few seconds ago. As much as she hated to admit it, what the woman was saying did make a certain amount of sense. Was the only reason she asked Ames to heal to keep New Wave's reputation intact? Would the criminals really stop doing what they were doing if they could just walk out of the police station without a care in the world?

What was the point of breaking a man's jaw if it was healed up again? People like him learned through pain as to what they could do and what they could not. It wasn't as if they deserved to be healed, they were criminals and villains.

"I imagine that more than a few of your targets may hold some resentment for what you did to them. And while you yourself might be invulnerable, I imagine that dear Panacea is not," Boogeyman said with a careless shrug.

A cold chill swept down Glory Girl's spine at the cape's words. She had never thought about that. She felt her throat go dry at the thought of her sister being targeted by any one of the criminals that she had put behind bars, however temporarily. She glanced down to the pathetically mewling rapist.

 _What if that had been Ames?_

The dark thought wiggled its way through her imagination unbidden. Images of varying ways that her sister could be caught unaware and mistreated flashed through her mind's eye, making her stomach churn in horror and anger. She had gotten her fair share of threats before, and she had mostly ignored them because she knew that they wouldn't be able to do anything to her with her invincibility, but now the thought of Amy being gunned down to get back at her made bile rise in her throat.

What was worse was that the idea wasn't without precedent. While it had been before her time, Glory Girl knew that Fleur of New Wave had been killed by a former member of Marquis' organization as revenge for ensuring that the crime boss would be sent to the Birdcage. She had been gunned down in her civilian identity and left to bleed out on her kitchen floor for Lightstar to find later. Fleur's death had all but killed the New Wave movement and remained a stain on their legacy even after all these years.

"I-I'll protect her," Glory Girl shot back with a conviction she didn't truly feel. An image of Amy bleeding out onto the kitchen floor flashed inside her head.

"Perhaps you will," Boogeyman agreed with a slight nod. Her expression turned slightly more apologetic as she told the truth that Glory Girl didn't want to admit, even in the dark corners of her mind. "I'm sure that dozens of would be murders and rapists would regret their decision. But what about the one you miss?"

Glory Girl remained utterly silent as she floated back down the ground, her mind a whirl of dark futures for her sister. Her head shook silently as she tried to deny what the woman was saying.

"You might stop him from getting to your sister," Boogeyman said as she gave the man a glance. "But what about the next one? Or the one after that? You can win all you like, but you only have to lose _once_."

"Stop!" Glory Girl screamed in denial and rage as she covered her ears. She didn't want to hear this, she didn't want to think about this. The image of Amy cowering for her life as a dark shadow loomed over her filled her mind as she tried to push such thoughts out.

"I know you don't want to hear this," Boogeyman said with a kind tone. "But all I offer is the truth."

"What do you want?" Glory Girl growled as she turned her anger to the only available target. The parahuman seemed unruffled by her fury, instead, giving her a pitying expression as she stood to her feet and made her way to the rapist.

"All I want is for you to take your work to the logical conclusion," Boogeyman said as she set a foot down on the man's back. The rapist squirmed underneath her grip like a bug in a display case, unable to move the woman's immovable foot. "You've already hurt him, all you have to do is let him _stay_ that way."

Boogeyman gave the man a sharp kick, eliciting a wet scream from him as he was rolled onto his back. His skin was pale and clammy as he stared at Boogeyman's towering from. "We both know people like him just don't learn unless it's through pain and fear," she said as black sand started to form into a shape. Glory Girl watched as the sand turned into the form of a sword, the point coming to rest just above the man's zipper.

The man froze in place as he stared at the bladed weapon pointing at his privates. Half-formed pleas weaseled their way out of his broken jaw, barely comprehensible as human speech. Moisture started to build up around his eyes as his desperate pleas went unanswered and the sword dug in a little deeper, folding over the fabric of his jeans.

"You just need to make sure they learn their _lesson_ ," Boogeyman hissed as her eyes blazed with anger. The sword dispersed into nothing as the man fainted, the fear too much for his system to handle.

"I-I can't," Glory Girl admitted. It was difficult to admit that there was something that she couldn't do. It felt like wrenching her teeth out from her gums as the words forced their way out of her mouth.

She had always hated the idea of being incapable of doing something, of not being able to achieve a goal, of being mocked by those around her because she failed. It was the whole reason that she had triggered during that basketball game. And even though her trigger event was positively mild compared to some of the stories she heard, that day still stuck with her like a lingering shadow. A reminder that there were things that she couldn't do.

As she ran the Boogeyman's words through her head she couldn't find any real fault with the woman's logic. Was it brutal? Yes, leaving a man in a state like this would be beyond painful for him, but he was a rapist. It was like Boogeyman said, people like him only learned through fear and pain.

But to do so would be to give into everything her family stood against. Accountability, honesty, the very tenants that New Wave had been founded upon.

 _You think the monster will care when they're hurting Amy?_ The dark voice in the back of her mind whispered as it caressed her thoughts like a loving parent.

"Tell me, when was the last time that New Wave made a lasting difference to the city?" Boogeyman asked.

"When they took down Marquis," Glory Girl replied without even having to think about it. New Wave's victory over the crime lord hand been one of the things that had put them on the map as one of the more successful independent parahuman organizations.

"And what lasting accomplishments have they made since then?" Boogeyman asked, a slight smirk coloring her expression.

Glory Girl remained silent, unwilling to provide the answer. But the fact was, aside from putting away the occasional gang parahuman behind bars for a few days they really hadn't done anything of notice. While they did provide a certain amount of safety to the area that they patrolled, they had yet to make another lasting difference to the cities' criminal political structure.

"That's what I thought," Boogeyman said as she abandoned her position next to the unconscious rapist. Glory Girl could feel her muscles tense, and despite the assurance of her invulnerability she couldn't help but feel her gut backflip in fear as Boogeyman drew herself closer.

"You want to make a difference Victoria," Boogeyman said as she stopped a few feet from the blonde parahuman, yellow eyes locked with Victoria's bright baby blues. "Yet you constrain yourself to play fair, to pretend that the rapist and murderers will play by those same rules."

Glory Girl swallowed as more words poured out of Boogeyman's mouth, and for the life of her, she couldn't think of an argument to oppose her. Everything that she was saying made a certain amount of sense, but it couldn't be right. Because if it was right it meant that she hadn't been making the streets a safer place, she had been making them more dangerous for her sister.

"I'm offering you a chance to make a real difference. You don't have to force yourself to be a shining beacon of hope to appease the masses, with me you can take the fight to the gangs and make sure that your sister can never be hurt by them again," Boogeyman said as she held her hand out for Glory Girl to take. The second generation parahuman looked down at the hand with a far more contemplative expression than she probably should have had.

"I-" Glory Girl sputtered out, unable to bring herself to provide a resolute yes or no answer to the woman. Her mind felt as if it had been stuck in a blender as if everything that she knew was being turned on its head. Up was down, left was right.

"I understand that this is probably a difficult question for you to answer, so I'll tell you what," Boogeyman said as she lowered her hand. "Meet me back on this roof at midnight in three days' time and you can give me your answer then."

Glory Girl could only give Boogeyman a shaky nod as the woman started to step back into the impermeable shadows that covered the building. Before the parahuman disappeared entirely, she turned around to Glory Girl and said, "Remember Victoria, you can either be a hero, or you can make a difference." And with those parting words, Boogeyman vacated her place on the roof, leaving Glory Girl alone with her thoughts and the form of a broken rapist.

Her cell phone weighed heavily in her costume's secret pocket, like a burning piece of coal. All she would have to do to fix this mess was to call Ames and ask her to heal the man.

 _Then he could hurt her,_ the dark voice in the back of her mind whispered. If she allowed this man to be healed and he escaped, then she placed her sister at risk. If she left him as it was, then he would be unable to escape the police and would be locked up in prison instead. It wasn't like they wouldn't treat his wounds, it would just take a longer amount of time.

She could make the streets a little safer for Amy, and all she had to do was to not call her. She slipped her hand into her pocket as she tried to ignore the tremors wracking her limb. Conflicting thoughts and arguments whirled around her mind as she tried for the life of her to figure out what she was going to do. As a cold breeze ruffled her skirt Boogeyman's words echoed through her mind.

 _You only have to lose once._

Glory Girl steeled herself as she made her choice.

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	19. Terror 3-2

**Enjoy!**

Terror 3.2

Boogeyman tore out from the shadows a few blocks away from where she had left Glory Girl contemplating her offer. She ignored the gravelly sensation underneath her feet as she turned back towards the parahuman's position. Even with her superb night vision the building was too far away to see anything but a few blurred blobs. For a moment, she considered the possibility that Glory Girl might be able to see her, but cast that thought aside.

There was no way that Glory Girl would be able to recognize her at this distance. Even with the moon providing some illumination into the dark the distance was just too great.

 _Lunar Tsar._

Boogeyman brought a hand up to her forehead at the sudden flash of pain, as if she had just gotten a brain freeze. The feeling faded as quickly as it had come, but for some reason she doubted that it was just a headache. As she turned her gaze towards the cratered orb in the sky she couldn't help but feel as though she was staring into Emma's face. As if something about the moon angered her. But as she stared at the moon nothing came to mind as to what could inspire such anger and she pushed the irrational feeling away.

 _That went better than expected,_ she thought with some surprise. She had been afraid that the conversation would eventually end up like it had with Jennifer, but it had gone surprisingly well. There had been a minor hiccup when Glory Girl had thought she had been threatening her sister, and she nearly had to bite her tongue off to keep herself from digging into Glory Girl's fears. But despite that minor lapse she had still planted the seeds of doubt into the parahuman's head.

In all honestly, she couldn't even say that she had lied at any point during her conversation with Glory Girl. It wasn't as thought she had made up the facts and figures that polluted the city, or that vengeful criminals didn't exist. All she had done was dredged up the fears that had been buried so deep even Glory Girl didn't consciously know that she had them.

Though her fears hadn't been the only reason that Boogeyman had chosen to meet with Glory Girl. She could have gone to half a dozen other heroes if she had let their fears be the deciding factor. There were plenty of terrified independent capes in the city that she could have picked from, and wouldn't have had to worry about possible retaliation from an entire family of capes.

Even the girl's aura was more of an afterthought. Boogeyman had tasted the fear that Glory Girl's "awe aura", as it had been named by PHO, and found it wanting. What fear it had created had been tainted by things like respect and wonder and it had tasted…bland for a lack of a better word. There was nothing personal about it, no creativity to tailor it to a specific person. There was no true substance for her to gather, it was like eating an MRE. She could live off it if she wanted to, but it wouldn't be very tasty or filling.

No, the real reason she had chosen Glory Girl had been because of her worldview. If she had to be honest the girl's view was simplistic. She wouldn't call the young parahuman stupid by any stretch of the imagination, but she didn't really put much effort into her critical thinking skills. While she had never outright said anything, posts on PHO, videos of fights and interviews had all but screamed that she thought that criminals and villains were scum of the earth. To her criminals were acceptable targets of her wrath, and judging by the fears that Boogeyman had discovered in a few gang members, she made good on those beliefs.

Boogeyman didn't fault her for thinking like that, in fact she applauded it. She had been honest with the parahuman when she said she appreciated her work. Criminals needed to learn to fear the consequences of their actions, and Glory Girl did that by pulverizing their bones into dust. Unfortunately, instead of leaving them to learn their lesson she called in her sister to heal them up and hide away any wrongdoing on her part. It was honestly amusing to see Glory Girl deny that what she was doing was different from Boogeyman, that it was okay for her to rough up the criminals as long as they were healed and hidden away.

The fact that what she was doing was in fact the complete antithesis for what her family stood for was even more amusing. Glory Girl made speeches at public events about the need for more cape accountability while at the same time completely failing to live up to the very standards that she had set for herself. All the while being completely blind to what she was doing, so self-assured of her own righteousness that she was confident that what she was doing wasn't wrong.

Boogeyman wasn't so deluded. She knew that what she was doing to the criminals was wrong, but she still chose to do it anyway. She wasn't sure if that made her a better person for recognizing her flaw, or even worse for her to acknowledge her fault while at the same time still doing it. But she supposed in the end it didn't matter so long as she got the job done and made and actual difference.

It wasn't like she had much of a choice in a city like Brockton Bay. Perhaps in New York or Los Angeles she might have been able to take a softer approach, but the villains of this city had been too free for too long to do whatever they wanted for a softer approach to work. She needed to be hard and uncompromising to drive the criminals back into the shadows where they belonged, back into her domain. The hard way of giving the criminals a chance had passed into oblivion, now was time for the easy way.

They would learn to fear her or die.

Or both, she was flexible.

Glory Girl was only a few degrees separated from her. All she had to do was convince the heroine that letting the criminals get healed and go free was counterproductive to her work and that leaving them as they were would prevent more people from being hurt. All she had done was tug on the parahuman's fears of her sister being hurt and give her an option that could prevent such a thing from occurring.

The best part of all was that she hadn't been lying to Glory Girl. She might have stretched the truth a bit, but everything that she had told the New Wave cape was based on reality. Every cape of New Wave was in constant danger of being attacked out of costume by almost literally every gang member of the city.

It was ironic that New Wave wanted to be rid of the rules that protected criminals and villains from justice while at the same time using those rules to hide behind as a shield. They clung to the illusion that their civilian identities were safe from retaliation, even with the death of Fleur haunting their memories. A senseless, pointless death because someone decided to not play by the rules.

It's all fun and games until someone decides to flip the board.

All she had really done was convince Glory Girl that those rules wouldn't protect her sister when push came to shove. And once Glory Girl had been convinced, she had presented the parahuman with another way to ensure the protection of her sister. The rest? The justifications and rationalizations- those all came from Glory Girl herself. Boogeyman didn't need to whisper such thoughts into Glory Girl's ears, all she had to do was present to her the mere idea that what she was doing could end up harming her sister if she didn't correct her errors.

It was kind of sad that a hero of Glory Girl's repute could be so easily convinced to perform such acts, but then again, it wasn't like her hands weren't already dirty. She had been honest to Glory Girl when she said that she had met a few criminals who had nightmares of her. They weren't exactly numerous, but there were enough to show a pattern of violent tendencies. It was a little surprising that something like this wasn't brought up amongst the criminals given the scandal that New Wave would face if it was aired in public. Though she supposed it made a certain amount of sense. Given that the recipients of said beatings were healed by Panacea, any proof to the wrongdoing was thrown out the window. And nobody was going to believe a commons street thug over the likes of a reputable source like Glory Girl.

Boogeyman had to hold back a snort of amusement that the one of the capes how preached about accountability was doing the exact same thing that had gotten Sophia and the Protectorate in so much trouble. The only difference was that Glory Girl confined herself to acceptable targets like criminals and villains.

She supposed that should have made her dislike the blonde parahuman, but she just couldn't work up the distaste to do so. Sophia's torment had been personal and soul shattering, and her practice of letting those who didn't fight back get hurt left a bad taste in her mouth. For all her faults Glory Girl was better than Sophia.

 _I suppose that's not saying much_ , Boogeyman thought as she mentally called Phobia to her location. A rabid dog would probably be an improvement over Sophia, because at least then you could blame the dog for being legitimately out of its mind.

For all of her hypocrisy, Boogeyman appreciated Glory Girl's desire to see criminals off the streets. She wanted to make a lasting difference to the city, even if it meant going against what her family stood for. All she needed was a little push past the line that had been drawn before her, a little encouragement that what she was doing was right.

Even if Glory Girl didn't join her, the seeds of doubt had been woven into her mind. That nagging little voice that whispered of the threats to his sister and family, real or not, would drive her to take a stronger stance against the criminals that infested this city like rats on a ship.

Either way, she would call that conversation a victory.

But as Phobia rose up beneath her with an alien grace she knew that it wasn't time to pat herself on the back. She still needed to investigate Coil.

She wanted to avoid tipping him off or making any major moves against him while she was still fighting the Empire, but spending a night looking for information wouldn't be amiss. Her lesson with the Merchants was still freshly burned into her mind. She knew all too well the risks of chagrining into something without a plan. She didn't want to go after Coil only to find out he had some sort of trick up his sleeve.

She gave a tug to Phobia's reigns as they formed in her hands and set the Nightmare off. As the personification of her former best friend's nightmares trotted underneath her, Boogeyman allowed herself to relax a little. There was no point in allowing herself to get worked up with whatever her imagination cooked up about Coil. She would simply have to wait to find out more about him.

But with her powers, finding someone who knew something about Coil wouldn't be that difficult. So long as one person had the slightest trace dread at the mention of Coil's name she would know. The sleeping mind could hold few secrets from her gaze.

She doubted the search would take that long.

* * *

Okay, now she was starting to get irritated.

Boogeyman bit back a frustrated growl as another city block turned up fruitless. Phobia shifted underneath her, but she ignored the Nightmare as she tried to solve the problem at hand. She could feel her teeth grinding against each other as yet another hour passed by with nothing to show for it.

How was it that nobody seemed to know anything about Coil?

It wasn't like she was expecting a wellspring of information from the civilians, but none of them seemed to know anything about the cape. His name held no fear over them other than a general recognition of his existence, and even that wasn't a sure thing. This was supposed to be the heart of his territory, it was almost inconceivable that no one knew anything about the man. If she had tried this in Empire of ABB territory, then she would have gotten _something_.

Even if the average person didn't keep track of criminal activity, they at the very least learned from their environment and other inhabitants of what to expect. They knew things about the gangs that helped them survive in the areas that they lived in, lest they encounter trouble. Minorities knew better than to walk around Empire territory during the night, or the day for that matter. Young woman learned never to walk alone near the ABB otherwise they might get taken.

But here? There was nothing. No fear that helped them survive or adapt to their surroundings, merely a general apathy towards the villain. Towards the cities' criminal enterprises in general really. This was the rich side of the city, where all the wealthy people gathered to show off their riches in a constant "I'm better than you" competition. It was somewhat revolting to see them like this when half the city was in disrepair.

But her anger towards the 1% would have to be shelved for another day when she wasn't looking for a link to a villain.

This drought of knowledge was making her even more suspicious towards Coil's intentions. Nobody hid themselves and kept information out of the public eye this thoroughly unless they had something important to hide. And given Coil's status as a criminal she was willing to bet whatever he was trying to hide wouldn't be pretty.

But none of that would matter if she couldn't find the blasted snake!

Boogeyman could feel her teeth gnashing against each other in frustration as she spurred Phobia onto the next roof. The concrete clicked underneath her steed's hooves as they passed under the shadow of a skyscraper. There were quite a few lights still on, but she doubted that anyone would be able to see her even if they bothered to look out the window. What little light the moon would have provided them was currently being blocked by a mass of dark clouds that threatened to consume the very sky.

Boogeyman really hoped that it wasn't going to rain. The last thing she needed was to be both wet and miserable. But for now, the dark rolling mass seemed content to merely darken the moon's illuminating light, which served her purposes well.

Her original intent had been to find someone who knew enough about Coil that they genuinely feared the man and work from there. Even if the man wasn't afraid of Coil himself they would be scared of Coils' enforcers and that would still eventually lead to the man himself. It was sad that most people didn't understand the principle of the six degrees of separation, or at the very least comprehend its implications. With a proper understanding of the concept you could find almost anyone.

No matter how much they tried to hide from you.

That was really the only thing keeping her going at this point, was that she knew that at the very least _one_ person in this city knew something about Coil. It would be almost impossible for Coil to run a criminal enterprise without having contact with someone. All she had to do was find a single person who knew something about the man and she would be able to unravel the rest of his thread.

Boogeyman pulled on a few nightmares of a building's occupants as she passed overhead, providing herself some nourishment for the long night ahead. At this point she didn't care how long it was going to take, she would find someone connected to Coil in some way, because now she needed to ease her anger. Before it had been because she was curious how someone like him could survive in a city like this, but now she was going to find him for no other reason than to punish him for irritating her so much. Maybe then…

Boogeyman's head snapped up as she tugged on Phobia's reigns to pull her to a stop. The Nightmare neighed as the sand ropes tugged on her muzzle, but Boogeyman wasn't paying attention to that. No, her focus was on the mind on the very edge of her range. A mind that had a rather acute fear of Coil.

Boogeyman urged her steed with her mind and with her reigns, forcing the mockery of an equine to charge forwards into the night. The Nightmare's hooves crossed the air as if it was made of earth, rushing over the buildings with the speed of a demon. Boogeyman could feel the air buffeted her grinning face as they crossed the buildings beneath them. The lights seemed to flicker and fade as she passed over them, as if she were carrying a blanket of darkness over the streets.

"Hold," Boogeyman ordered as she pulled on Phobia's reigns. The Nightmare skidded to a stop atop the roof of a single-story house. Compared to some of the other buildings in the area it was rather quaint, but it still had a vigor that her own had lacked. Paint wasn't chipping off the side or a rotten corpse of a tree in the back yard from years of neglect.

Boogeyman dismounted from her steed and gave it a soft pat on the snout. "Stay here," Boogeyman said as she made her way to the edge of the roof. Her Nightmare snorted, but complied with her directive. She would make sure to give Phobia a nice snack before they left, but right now this needed her own personal touch.

Her body melted into liquid shadows as she crept down the side of the building as a black mass indistinguishable from the darkness that surrounded her. She slipped through the tiny crack where the window met the frame, a space so small that if she hadn't been literally heightless she wouldn't have been able to squeeze through.

Boogeyman pulled herself back into her regular form as she took stock of her surroundings. Judging by the television bolted to the wall and the couches and chairs scattered about she was in some sort of family room. But there was something about it that felt off for a lack of a better word. The walls were a dull beige with only a handful of pictures to brighten up the room. But what was odd was that none of the pictures were personal. They were all stock photographs of things like the Statue of Liberty or Mount Rushmore, as if the owner had taken the most stereotypical American things imaginable and plastered them all over the room. There was even a beer mini fridge in the corner that wasn't even plugged in. The entire room screamed of someone trying to convince the world that he was something that he really wasn't.

Boogeyman ghosted through the rest of the house, each room telling a similar story. A huge dining table that only had wear and tear on one side. Two bathrooms, but only one stocked with supplies. Everything had been set up to give the illusion that this house was owned by an average American, but as she neared the bedroom Boogeyman could tell that the man was anything but.

He was already being plagued by a minor nightmare, one of death and violence. The calm façade the man created for his sleeping form hid a much more troubled mind that what one would expect. She could feel the nightmare grow darker and more violent as a reaction to her mere presence. The man's calm face twisted into a dark frown.

Boogeyman silently guided over the floorboards as she approached the sleeping man. Her yellow eyes narrowed as the slight lump underneath his pillow which indicated a pistol of some sort jammed underneath. She didn't think that it would do him much good since she took a point blank shot from Miss Militia (and wasn't that ironic that the woman who hated children killers was so willing to become one herself) she was fairly confident that she would be able to brush the shot off.

Boogeyman loomed over the man's sleeping form. The blankets had slipped down revealing a well-muscled chest that had a huge scar running across from his shoulder blade and into his gut to where she couldn't see it. She reached out and clicked his bedside lamp on. Her eyebrow ridge raised up at the sight of a PRT officer badge laying on the nightstand.

The man's eyes squinted in protest as the sudden influx of light being shown through his eyelids. He grunted as he shifted his weight over to reach out and turn the lamp off, but as his blearily opened his eyes he came face to face with Boogeyman's wide smile.

"Hello," Boogeyman said as her teeth glinted in the lamplight.

She had to give the man credit, once he recognized the situation that he was in he moved quickly. A flash of fear overtook the man as his hand leapt out to under his pillow to grab his hidden gun even as his body started twisting to the side to get out of her range. He might have even made it had he been facing an ordinary opponent.

Boogeyman's own hand struck out with the speed of a viper and wrapped itself around the man's throat. Before the man could even recognize that her hand was clutching his throat, she lifted him off the bed and threw him to the side away from his pistol. While she as confident it wouldn't hurt her, a gunshot might be heard by the neighbors and bring more attention than she wanted right now. Especially since he was apparently a PRT agent.

She supposed that she should have felt more concern that she was invading a PRT agent's house, but her recent experiences had torn away the glittering façade of the agents just as much as the heroes. There was also the fact that the man's fear didn't immediately jump to the PRT, but rather to Coil instead. To have such an acutely developed fear of the man implied some form of familiarity with the man.

The man grunted as his body slammed against the floorboards as he tried to twist his body into a roll to escape her. Boogeyman didn't even bother giving him a chance to escape as she lunged forward and kicked the band in the gut. She felt several bones snap underneath the force of her kick and could see the man clutching his side as he came to rest against the wall.

Apparently realizing that escape wasn't an option the man relaxed a bit as he leaned against the wall. His eyes glared at her defiantly, but she could feel the dread and terror lurking behind those orbs. He had apparently seen and heard what she was capable of and felt the appropriate amount of fear.

He would have been a fool not to.

"I'm afraid I can't have you leaving just yet, Lewis," Boogeyman said as a sand sword formed in her hands. She could see a bead of sweat roll down the man's forehead at the sight of her impossibly black blade. His Adam's apple bobbed as she brought the tip a mere inch from his skin. "We need to have a talk."

"I'm not going to tell you anything," Lewis spat out through clenched teeth. It was amusing to how far the man was going to try and hide his terror. His expression was twisted into an angry snarl and the veins on his neck pulsed in anger. It might have fooled her if she was anyone but herself.

"Come now Lewis, I just want to know about Coil," Boogeyman said in a relaxed and conversational tone. There was a pulse of fear at the mention of Coil, a fear of her finding out? No, a fear of Coil finding out that she found out.

Boogeyman had to hold back a twitch of her lips. Apparently for all his dread of her the man feared Coil's retribution more. Even being put into a prison for espionage didn't stoke the latent flames of terror as much as the thought of betraying the snake. While it wasn't anything concrete, it did give her the image of a man that viewed people as expendable pawns to be discarded once their usefulness ran out.

But in Brockton Bay that might as well be the norm. She needed more information.

"Lewis, Lewis, Lewis," Boogeyman said as she shook her head in a pitying manner. "All I want is to know a little more about our resident villain. Is that really too much to ask?" Boogeyman leaned in a bit, careful not to let herself within the man's reach and mock whispered, "He'd never have to know."

"I'm not going to tell you anything," Lewis hissed through clenched teeth as his lips pulled back into a sneer that was probably meant to intimidate her. Personally, she thought his defiance was adorable, but that probably wasn't the image he was going for.

"Well then Lewis, if you won't tell be anything let me ask you this," Boogeyman said with a sigh. In a flurry of motion so fast that the man could barely make out what was happening, he found himself pinned up against the wall. Boogeyman watched as defiance mixed with fear whilst his legs ineffectually swung out in blind panic. She allowed her sword to reform into a much smaller and more jagged knife that she pressed up against his throat, just barely breaking the skin.

"Then why do I need to keep you alive?"

Boogeyman's grin stretched out a bit wider as Lewis' heart skipped a beat. She could feel the cold terror that he felt as he realized that he was a disposable asset to her.

"You can't," he managed to choke out through hitched breaths. His eyes were wide and pleading as if he could somehow force her to be merciful to him.

"No, I _can_ , you just don't want me to," Boogeyman said. It always baffled her whenever someone said that she couldn't kill them. Did any of them honestly think that she would stop what she was doing just because they declared she couldn't? It never seemed to bother them when _their_ victims begged them to stop. "And honestly if you're not going to give me anything I don't see the point in keeping you alive."

"T-the PRT will come after you," he said, the pitch of his voice rising as she dug her blade a little further into his throat. His argument had merit, but it wasn't as if the PRT hadn't already been eyeing her. If she hadn't released the information about what Sophia had been doing she was certain that she would have had a personal visit from Legend by the end of the day. Attacking a PRT agent out of the blue would certainly bring more ire towards her, but it wasn't as if PRT agents hadn't died before. There was probably a dozen or two dead attributed to Hookwolf alone. One more agent, and a spy at that, wouldn't mean too much to the PRT and Protectorate. She could see his skin pale dramatically as her weapon remained unmoved by his statement.

"The PRT was already going to come after me," Boogeyman said with an eye roll to demonstrate how little she thought of his threat. "And I'm willing to be you're not as good as hiding your secrets as you think you are. What do you think they would find if I carved the word 'traitor' into your chest, hmm?"

The man was practically shaking like a leaf at her threats as his defenses were torn apart like wet paper.

"He'll kill me," he whispered, barely audible even with her hearing. It was as if it was a statement of fact rather than speculation. The thought of being gunned down by a group of masked killers flittered through his mind, unassisted by her own hand. The man was afraid of Coil, she just had to make him terrified of her.

"I'd worry about _me_ killing you," Boogeyman said as she twisted the knife a little harder. Lewis winced in protest as the treatment of his skin, but otherwise did nothing as he stared at her with his apprehensive gaze. Boogeyman could feel the fear of her and the fear of Coil's retribution warring inside his mind. The man was terrified of dying, but he had yet to decide whose death he feared more.

She should help him with that.

"Very well," Boogeyman said with an exaggerated sigh as she moved to dig the knife into this throat.

"WAIT!" he screamed, eyes bulging from their sockets in pure terror. His heart hammered against his ribcage as beads of sweat rolled down his neck. Boogeyman had to resist the urge to smirk at the man's state.

 _Gotcha._

"I'll…I'll tell you what I know," Lewis said in a defeated tone.

"Yes," Boogeyman replied with a hiss as she threw the man to the floor, knocking the air out of his lungs. She pinned him under her foot and reformed her knife into a much larger and longer sword. She allowed herself to loom over the man and inflate her form a little to give the appearance that she was much larger than she actually was. It took less than a second for the man's hindbrain to recognize the threat of a much larger and more powerful predator, adding to the already growing fear inside the man's psyche.

There would be no lies coming from him tonight.

"You will."

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	20. Terror 3-b

**Enjoy!**

Terror 3.b

Endbringer shelters were remarkable pieces of engineering. Buried under several hundred feet of dirt and earth their thick concrete and steel walls could survive the harshest of conditions. Storms would bounce right off them and earthquakes wouldn't even move the titanium anchored buildings. Blast doors a foot thick could withstand the main gun of a tank and were utterly airtight. Add in a dedicated generator with enough supplies and theoretically one could remain inside indefinitely. They were utterly self-sufficient. There were only a few things that could breach an Endbringer shelter with regularity.

Endbringers.

Coil supposed it was ironic that the one thing that Endbringers shelters were designed to keep out were one of the few things that they couldn't. No matter how thick the walls were built or how deep underground they were buried Endbringers would always find a way through. Behemoth would simply dig until the entire facility was within his kill zone and flood the bunkers with radiation. Leviathan would have his waves eat away at the foundations and sweep the buildings out to sea, assuming he didn't just sink the city. The Simurgh would lock everyone inside and drive them mad with her powers, using the very thing that was meant to keep them safe to destroy them all.

No, trying to build something to withstand the Endbringers was a futile endeavor, which was why Coil had long since stopped trying long ago. Unless the shelter was high profile or subject to rigorous inspection, it was rare for the buildings to be built up to the standard that he had originally set. It wasn't that he particularly wanted the Endbringers to kill thousands of the mindless peons, but the resources needed to build one were expensive. It was far cheaper to use lesser quality materials than trying to ship in thousands of pounds of steel and titanium. Besides, it wasn't like building them even stronger were going to save any of them in the end, so why should he bother? The money that would have been wasted on the bunkers were put into far more productive positions, like bribing local officials or hiring international mercenaries.

The one expectation he made was to his own personal bunker. If he was going to live in something, then he was going to make sure that it was well built. It still wasn't finished yet, but they were coming close. The project had been delayed numerous times because of the secrecy of it. It wasn't like they could just start digging a hole on the surface in plain view. Secreting the materials through the sewers systems was time-consuming, but it had been the best way to keep the bunker a secret. A few bribes to the right maintenance workers and nobody was the wiser than he had built his own personal Endbringer shelter underneath the city.

Unlike others, this one was built up to code, it not beyond. A barracks in the southern part of the building housed his mercenaries and their Tinker tech weapons. It was useful for keeping them from being discovered by a nosy investigator and allowed him to keep a close eye on them.

The rooms were airtight and soundproof, which meant no biological or chemical attack could get through. A sensible precaution, given the existence of the Slaughterhouse Nine and Bonesaw. The entirety of the bunker's systems could be controlled from his desk computer where he stored his most important files, including the codes to the building's self-destruct. Coil hoped that he would never have to use the shaped charges placed ay key points in the structure's foundations, but it was always better to be safe than sorry. Any invaders who managed to breach the bunker would find him long gone and themselves being buried under thousands of pounds of rubble.

This was his place of safety, where he could hide from all the dangers that existed outside and focus on his work. In one timeline, he was rereading the files that he had managed to acquire from the PRT's databanks. It was almost amusing how easy it was to gain access to PRT files compared to the Protectorate's databanks. The local Protectorate had the advantage of having Armsmaster as a member who regularly consulted with Dragon. The cyber defenses that those two could create together were almost unparalleled. He had often wondered why Piggot didn't have them work on the PRT's local mainframe as well, but he chalked that up to her bias against capes. It was something that he was going to have to correct once he was in charge, a goal that was starting to seem more distant by each day.

In his secondary timeline, Coil was taking out his well-deserved frustration of the events that were currently ruining his plans.

 _Thomas Calvert could feel a pulse of satisfaction wash over him as the tinker tech pistol in his hands thrummed with power. Smoke from the impressive amount of heat the pistol produced wrapped around the gunmetal gray barrel like a blanket. The smell of burning human flesh wafted up to his covered nose. Coil took a deep breath and allowed the scent of death to overcome him as his target slumped to the floor lifelessly._

 _Mr. Pitter's eyes were frozen in fear and shock as what little life remained was slowly drained out by the gaping wound in his chest. Along his sternum was a near perfect circle about the size of a quarter. No blood seeped out of the wound, the intense heat from the blast having cooked the man inside out. The beam had punched straight through Mr. Pitter's body and left a black burn mark on the titanium reinforced door behind him._

 _"Thank you, Mr. Pitter," Coil said to the lifeless corpse._

As the last twitches left the former doctor's body Coil allowed the timeline to collapse back in on itself, leaving him alone with the paperwork he had managed to collect. He split the timeline again, but this time he pulled out the fold up bed from the bunker's wall to get a nap, but not before double checking the door's seal. It wouldn't do him any good if he couldn't think straight in at least one of his timelines. While his other self was settling down for a short rest, Coil had buried himself in paperwork, looking for some way to salvage this mess than had fallen into his lap.

Coil could feel his hands tighten around the papers as a thought of the one responsible for this catastrophe filtered through his mind. If he ever saw that Ward he was going to shoot her, damn the consequences.

What was even more galling about the situation was that had this been kept in-house he could have used it. The threat of such a PR nightmare would have been just what he needed to force Piggot out of office. It would have been a little sooner than he would have liked, but one didn't become a millionaire by letting opportunities pass. A scandal like this would have destroyed Piggot's career and with the dirt he had on the few other candidates for her directorship, he would have been all but guaranteed the position.

But now the scandal was public, and the entire world knew that something was rotten in the state of Denmark. Reporters were coming in from around the country looking to get the next big scoop, tourists were canceling vacations, business were looking at the city with a warier gaze. And to top it off, the city was on the brink of a gang war that he wasn't prepared for. He was still compiling a list of Empire identifies, and that would take weeks for him to finish. The Undersiders were only just starting to get some traction, and hadn't even gone on their first heist yet.

But honestly, none of that frustrated him as much as the internal scrutiny the local PRT was getting. If the situation had been kept an internal he could have bribed or threatened the investigators off so that they would look away from his agents, but with the public outcry so great that wasn't going to be possible. Internal Affairs was going to send their best agents to look into the hellhole that was Brockton Bay, and Coil doubted he would be able to cow them into submission.

It meant that he was going to have to cut back on his intelligence operations and make sure all of his agents' histories were in order. Which meant wasting time scrolling through files double checking for irregularities that could have been spent more productively. It also meant that he was going to be flying blind during one of the most unstable times in the recent memory.

What was even worse was that this was likely to kill any chance of him becoming Director. The best-case scenario was that Piggot's career survived the purge by a thread. He could worm his way in by presenting himself as a man who existed outside of the PRT and uninvolved in the scandal. His best bet would have been to divulge his former history as a PRT strike squad member and how he left because of internal issues. He would have to keep exactly what the internal issues were a secret of course, but that wasn't impossible.

But Coil had been in this business long enough that even with near infinite retries, one didn't always get what they wanted. It was just as likely that they would bring someone from outside the Bay to deal with the issue, and he would bet that whoever they brought in would be experienced and capable. The public would need to be assured that they had someone who knew what they were doing was on the job. They wouldn't be able to afford another screw up like this.

He could manipulate Piggot because he knew her. He knew of her stubbornness and headstrong attitude. A new director would be a complete unknown and be far more difficult to manipulate. It could very well take him months or years to set up the pieces to bring them crashing down.

All because of one idiot Ward.

He was going to kill her in both timelines, that's what he was going to do.

Coil could feel his teeth grinding against each other as he scanned the paperwork once more, looking for anything that he could use to fix this colossal screw-up. But for all of his efforts, his search was coming up empty. Rules and regulations were splayed out before him in a disjointed chaotic mess as he tried to find a loophole that could get him out of the pit that had been dug. Something that could draw the investigator's attention away from the local PRT.

He had tried to help the PRT push the blame onto the school, but Sophia's handler had already confessed to hiding evidence of wrongdoings. He could have tried to silence her in an "accident", but Pandora's Box had already been opened. If he had gotten to her before she had confessed the PRT might have been able to contain the damage, but that opportunity had long since passed.

No, the public had tasted the blood in the water and were going after the PRT with a ravenous hunger that almost bordered on zealotry. In the privacy of his head, he doubted that even if he found a loophole in the rules to force the investigation away that he would be able to. The public was demanding recompense, and if the PRT didn't deliver…well, then they could very well find themselves facing full blown rioting in the streets. At the very least they needed to make a show of evaluating every aspect of the local PRT, and knowing Piggot she wouldn't let an opportunity like this slip away from her. Even if her own career went down the toilet, she would milk this for all that it was worth.

He suspected that his agents weren't the only ones that were going to find a noose tightening around their necks.

Coil sighed irritably as he allowed the paperwork to slip from his fingers. It was infuriating that he knew exactly what the problem was but lacked the ability to fix it. His only real option was to cut back on his activities and hope that the PRT didn't find anything damning. It was galling to have to secede control of the situation, but there was little that he could try to do without making things worse. This level of scrutiny wasn't something had he usually had to deal with, and it was already starting to take its toll on his operations.

It was difficult to play chess when someone went and flipped the board.

Coil shuffled his hand through the pile of papers looking for one file in particular. He had to burn a favor of his to get a copy of it, but given the speed at which the city's political landscape was changing it was a necessary sacrifice. The last thing he wanted to do was start a fight blind. He still had nightmares of the last time that happened.

As he pulled the file in question out from the pile he had to wonder if someone ever actually stopped reading a paper just because someone had plastered the word classified on the top. Someone who had already broken the law to get their hands on the document wasn't going to be stopped by a little ink. A single name stood out on the manila envelope.

Boogeyman.

As much as he despised Sophia Hess for being the reason that his plans were circling the toilet, there was a not so insignificant amount of that anger towards Boogeyman. She had been the catalyst of this entire situation that he had found himself stuck in. He needed to know about her if he was going to deal with her.

The file was virtually empty, but there was enough that he could start to get a rough idea of how to deal with the new parahuman. Unfortunately for Coil, what it suggested was that it wouldn't be an easy fight.

PRT Threat Analysis

Codename: Boogeyman

Civilian Identity: Taylor Hebert

Affiliations: Independent Villain- Class V

Profile: In- Progress

Power Classifications:

Master 6-8 (Sub. Mover 4)- Boogeyman's primary power consists of creating constructs that resemble equines. These constructs appear to be made of some sort of sand-like material, though samples collected have proven to be impossible to analyze. These "Nightmares" can manipulate their forms to some degree and are capable of vanishing into shadows. It his hypothesized that they share the same Mover capabilities as Boogeyman herself. It is currently unknown how many of these constructs Boogeyman can create, though unconfirmed testimony suggests well over a hundred.

Mover 4- Boogeyman and her minions have demonstrated the ability to "dive" into shadows and vanish from view. It is unknown if this is a form of direct teleportation or some sort of pocket dimension. The range of this Mover power is also uncertain, though supposition from Protectorate Hero Velocity suggests a range of 100 yards at a minimum.

Brute 4- Boogeyman has demonstrated the ability to lift fully grown men up in one hand without any visible effort on her part and has survived a point-blank headshot with little reaction. Use of heavy firearms is authorized.

Thinker 4(?)- Though little direct evidence exists, interactions with Boogeyman suggest some form of Thinker information gathering. Boogeyman was able to bring up certain information with several individuals that would be difficult if not impossible to obtain. Though extensive surveillance should not be discounted, it is likely that she has some form of information gathering ability.

Striker/Blaster 4- Boogeyman has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to create weaponry from the same substance that her minions are made of. These weapons are primitive swords and other melee weapons, though it is likely that she can create ranged projectiles as well.

Trump 3- Attempts by Watchdog Thinkers to analyze Boogeyman's power set have proven useless. While models of her behavior have proven useful*, any attempt to scan her powers have resulted in Thinker headaches. Precognitives have also claimed that predictions involving Brockton Bay have started to become "fuzzy". Boogeyman had also demonstrated the capacity to interfere with non-Thinker powers as well (see Miss Militia Personnel File).

*Due to the apparent interference with Thinker powers, any psych analysis must be subject to thorough review.

Combat Strategies:

Due to recent public opinion towards Boogeyman as a result of her destruction of the Merchants (see File 1177) and the Shadow Stalker Scandal (see File 1921) Boogeyman is not to be engaged in combat unless in the process of a crime.

If a conflict is inevitable, PRT units should focus on evacuating civilians from the zone of conflict and wait for parahuman support. While numerous, her minions can be destroyed from sufficient kinetic or energy impacts. And while Boogeyman has survived gunshot wounds to the head, it is suspected that a sufficient level of force could force her down for a time.

Containment measures should focus on keeping her away from shadows so that she is incapable of teleporting through them.

Threat Level: B

While she possesses an array of powers, Boogeyman has not shown any apparent interest in engaging in criminal acts for profit. Her motivations and testimony align with those of a violent vigilante. While it is likely she will continue to escalate against the criminal elements of the city, it is unlikely she would start harming civilians.

-Authorized by Director Emily Piggot.

Coil bit back a string of curses as he tossed the file to the side. He had been hoping for a psych profile so he could determine what buttons he could push to manipulate her. But it appeared that the difficulty Watchdog was having with her had them second guessing their reports.

But even without that information, he didn't like what he saw. While she wasn't the second coming of Lung, she was a powerful cape in her own right with a respectable and diverse set of abilities. Her Mover rating would make her difficult, if not impossible, to contain if she really could teleport through shadows. After all, what was a shadow but an absence of light?

All it would take was the failure of one lightbulb and she would be able to free herself. Coil felt a chill travel up his spine at the thought of her jumping out at any one of the shadows that dotted the room. Coil wrapped his hands around his pistol as he eyed the shadows by the bookshelves and under his desk. He was going to have to install some for a light fixture to remove those. Some might call him paranoid, but his experiences had taught him the value of paranoia. Still, it wouldn't do him any good to have a panic attack. Coil wrenched his mind away from that rabbit hole of her Mover rating and brought his attention back to her other powers.

Her Master rating was somewhat concerning, but he was confident that he and his mercenaries would be able to plan around them. The Tinker tech laser rifles he had commissioned for a pretty penny could cut through steel, given enough time. That should be more than enough to deal with her minions given proper preparation.

Coil made a mental note to look into the possibility that their protocols for dealing with Crusader could be modified to deal with Boogeyman's minions.

Her Brute and Striker/Blaster rating would make direct conflict with her difficult, but if he could throw her at Lung of Hookwolf he could sit back and wait for the blood to spill. No, what worried him the most were her Thinker and Trump ratings.

Knowledge was power. That was a concept that Calvert had always held close to his chest. It didn't matter how strong your opponent was, so long as you had enough information on them you could defeat them. Use them. The entirety of his plans revolved around the idea of gathering information. If Boogeyman's Trump rating could interfere with his power, that would put a significant wrench in his plans.

Testing tactics was always easy when you could remove of the failures. RPG didn't kill Hookwolf and half the men got killed? That's okay, just shut down that timeline and try again another day. He had used his powers to determine the best ways to deal with the majority of the capes in the city. He probably knew more about them than they did about themselves. But if Boogeyman's power could interfere with his…

Well, Coil didn't need to be a Thinker to understand that would be bad. But what made matter worse was her apparent Thinker rating. He didn't have the pull to find out exactly what Boogeyman had said during her confrontation with Miss Militia, but he had watched the video of Shadow Stalker's verbal dismemberment. Part of him was impressed with how thoroughly she was able to rip apart her opponents, the majority of him was concerned about her bringing that might against him.

If she could do that to anyone of his spies, then his entire network could very well be in jeopardy. As professional as his spies were, all it would take was one man breaking and the entire thing could come crashing down.

But even her powers were secondary to the one thing that really made her a threat to his plans- her activeness.

Coil could deal with a powerful parahuman. He lived in a city with _Lung_ who was easily one of the most powerful parahumans on the east coast, given enough of a head start. But Lung didn't go out and demolish entire gangs in a single night. Lung, like all the other villains, were rather content with the balance of power in Brockton Bay. That wasn't to say they wouldn't take the chance to change in in their favor if the opportunity arose, but they usually didn't actively seek widespread change.

Boogeyman, though, she had torn apart the status quo without a moment's hesitation. She had been the equivalent of a paper house under a destruction of the Merchants had been a mixed blessing for Coil. On one hand, that was one more opponent that he no longer had to deal with. On the other hand, all of that time and resources that he had spent trying to insert Trainwreck into their ranks had been wasted. He had originally hoped that he could have set Trainwreck up as a linchpin of the Merchant's supply lines. Trainwreck would have gained popularity and support and then Skidmark would have an unfortunate "accident".

The end result would have been an entire gang of cannon fodder and patsies under his control. He could have even ordered Trainwreck to cut back on Merchant activities to give himself some political clout once he was the director, but now those plans were nothing more than ash in the wind. But not only had she shattered the delicate balance of power that Coil had been trying to keep until he was ready, but she then spat into the Protectorate and PRT's eye and backed the Empire into a corner. She had no apparent desire to slow down her activities or reign herself in.

He might have dismissed that as an eager youth biting off more than she could chew, but there was a certain level of calculation to her acts. Most parahumans didn't really think critically. They didn't look beyond the immediate problem and focused their energies on instant gratification rather than long-term planning. Coil had originally put Boogeyman into that category after her first official public appearance, but now he was starting to wonder. Her unveiling of Hess' activities and her killing of the Empire minions, that spoke of someone who understood the importance of the image they presented.

Reading through her school records, which had been disturbingly easy to grab and duplicate, didn't show someone of that intelligence. Her grades and attendance had been abysmal, barely passing most of her classes. She was clearly below average intelligence, so why was she so successful?

Coil rose from his seat and started to pace around his room. Could she have some sort of backer and she was merely a pawn in a greater game? Coil shook his head in disappointment. At this point, all of this was merely idle speculation. He didn't have enough information on Boogeyman to predict how she was going to act and he didn't want to risk the possibility that his power might fail on him if he went up against her.

He could see if Miss Livsey was able to discover anything about her, but contacting the girl this soon would betray his weak hand. She would latch onto his supposed weakness like a hound, and the last thing he needed at this juncture were his own tools rising up against him. No, it would be better to let things stew a bit longer before contacting her about Boogeyman. Knowing her she would start the investigation herself for no other reason than to show off to her newfound teammates.

It was almost a pity that a power such as hers was wasted on someone who didn't have much self-control. Instead of making something of herself with her powers Miss Livsey had been content to merely show herself off as the smartest person in the room. The very displays that she used to give herself satisfaction had been the very thing that had led him to her. The shade of red her face had become when he had informed her of that had been particularly amusing. A pity she didn't remember it.

Coil let out a deep sigh that ruffled the fabric of his skintight costume. Most of his usual options were off the table for information gathering at the moment it seemed. Even assuming that his spies survived the purge, the reshuffling of security codes would throw his operations into chaos for weeks. It would take at least that long for his spies to get the new codes and clearances for all juicy information they weren't supposed to have access to.

Still, he supposed that the situation wasn't entirely unsalvageable. If he managed to keep his head down, he might very well witness the end of the Empire. Despite Kaiser's protest about how the attack on the Hess family was unsanctioned, most people didn't care. The PRT and Protectorate were going to come after the Neo-Nazis. So long as he stayed in the shadows he could get through this.

A shrill screech filled his room, making him jump in surprise and panic. He could feel his heart rate soar through the roof as he aimed his Tinker tech pistol in the direction the noise was coming from. Coil let out a relieved sigh at the realization that the sound was coming from his desk phone and not from a nightmarish creature pouncing out of the shadows.

He was going to have to tell Bob to install new lights on the double.

He could feel a growing pit in his stomach as he was awakened in his secondary timeline by the shrill noise. The sound in question was only supposed to be used in emergencies, and his men were professional enough to know when to sound the alarm. If they thought the situation was that bad, then something important was happening.

Coil picked up the phone in both timelines even as his second-self had to shake off a few mental cobwebs.

"What is it?" They both asked. They kept their voiced calm and even as to avoid betraying the internal dread they were starting to feel. It wouldn't do for his mercenaries to feel as if he was panicking. Soldiers for hire rarely worked for people who couldn't hold themselves together.

"Someone's attacked Pastorius, sir," the man on the other end of the line replied. Coil frowned beneath his mask in both timelines. Pastorius was the codename for Lewis Piennar, one of the higher-ranking spies in his organization. The man's place in the PRT's data analysts made him useful for spotting new capes that he could coerce for his plans. Coil could feel a dread climbing up his spine as the realization that his spy network was under attack hit him.

 _"Who attacked him?" Coil asked in one timeline. If it was a villain then he would have to deal with them in short order, no matter how useful they might be in the future. He couldn't afford to lose his network on top of everything that was already happening._

"What happened?" Coil asked in another timeline. Mr. Piennar was competent at his job and had a moral flexibility that made him an excellent spy. For someone to have discovered his activities meant they had a substantial amount of information about him, more than he was comfortable with anyone knowing. Or even worse, it was the PRT clamping down on his spies.

 _"The police and PRT scanners suggest it was Boogeyman, sir," the mercenary answered, unaware of the fear he had just lanced his employer with. Coil could feel the phone's plastic casing start to creak as his hand tightened around it. He could feel his heart starting to pound against his ribcage. Despite that, he managed to keep his voice relatively level as he responded to the man._

 _"I see," he said. Really, there was nothing more that he could say. He could feel his free hand twisting into a fist as he tried to contain his rage._

"Pastorius was dumped on the PRT's doorstep with the word 'spy' carved into his forehead, sir," the man said. He was well trained, but even he couldn't keep a faint trace of disgust out of his voice.

"How long ago was this?" Coil demanded. If the PRT had already started looking into Piennar's files, then he needed to get those dealt with immediately.

"About ten minutes ago, sir," the man replied. Coil had to forcefully keep himself from sighing in relief. Ten minutes wouldn't be long enough for the PRT to have looked into the man's history. But it was only a matter of time before someone started looking.

"Initiate scrub protocols, and lock down our other agents," Coil ordered. Perhaps a slight overreaction, but he couldn't afford any breaches in security on top of everything else. Even using a Nazi based codename to throw off investigators he didn't want to take any risks. Coil got a dutiful yes sir from the man right before he hung up to carry out his orders. Scrub protocols weren't something he initiated lightly. Not because he cared about the mercenaries in particular, but they tended to get…rowdy when one of them was killed by him. It was just part of business, but they couldn't help but wonder if they would be next in line.

He was going to need to give them a bonus of some sort to settle their grumbling.

But regardless of what was going to happen to Mr. Piennar, it was clear that Boogeyman had taken an interest in him. He had no idea what could have possibly led her in his direction with how low a profile he had been keeping, but he supposed that didn't matter in the end. What _did_ matter was that he now had a very active and violent vigilante sticking her nose into his business, and he had no idea how to stop her.

"This cannot possibly get any worse," Coil muttered as he clutched his head in his hands.

 _"Keep me apprised of the situation," Coil said in his second timeline before hanging up the phone with a soft click. Once the line was clear Coil dialed up another one of the base's more expendable occupants._

 _"Mr. Pitter," he said, his voice brimming with barely contained rage. "I am in need of your assistance."_

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	21. Terror 3-3

**Enjoy!**

Terror 3.3

Boogeyman couldn't help but smirk as she watched the "highly trained" PRT agents scramble around like a group of headless chickens. She supposed that wasn't entirely their fault, it wasn't as if one expected a mutilated coworker to fall out of a shadow.

The sun was just barely starting to rise over the horizon, so she had a few more minutes to watch the PRT agents flounder. Still, she wouldn't want to stay here too long. Even if she was across the street and out of sight from the fortress-like building she didn't want to risk being caught off guard. Despite their apparent incompetence and the almost banal looking nature of the building, the PRT headquarters was a heavily defended facility.

A six-foot-tall wall separated the main structure from the street and the surrounding buildings. PRT troopers armed with containment foam launchers patrolled on top of the wall and along the reinforced gates that sealed the area off. The ground around the building had been completely cleared of trees in order to prevent someone from masking their approach while a majority of the bottom three story windows had been sealed up, and none of the remaining windows had their slats open.

The only view from the outside world was through two panels of bullet proof glass on a magnetic lock guarded by two burry looking PRT agents who were currently freaking out at the sight of the of one of their fellow agents with the word 'traitor' carved into his forehead. The entire building was built like a fortress to repel attacks by villains, and Boogeyman had to give them credit where credit was due. If she hadn't had the ability to travel through shadows she would have had a very hard time trying to break in.

It only made all the more infuriating that villains could break out of here with such regularity.

Boogeyman bit down on her bitterness and drew herself back into the shadows. As hidden as she was, she didn't want to risk being seen. She didn't doubt that the PRT had some sort of surveillance system for the surrounding buildings to avoid surprise attacks. As she merged back into the endless void of shadows and darkness she considered her options.

She would be the first to admit that she had taken a significant risk with this move. While an attack on a PRT agent wasn't exactly earth-shattering news in the town that Hookwolf and Lung lived in, it was still a significant sign of escalation. While she had left Sophia Hess a broken wreck of a human being she had at the very least a strong reason as to why she wanted to attack her.

And she had no doubt that if she hadn't released such compelling evidence to the public to crucify Sophia's image that the Protectorate would have come down on her like a sledgehammer. If she had given into her darker desirers and killed her she doubted that she would even be alive. The death of a Ward, no matter how violent or ill-tempered was something that the Protectorate could allow to happen without consequences. While she certainly had been stepping on the line of what was acceptable and what was not, she hadn't made that final jump.

She wanted to get revenge on Sophia, not bring Legend down on her skull.

The mauling and torture of a PRT officer, no matter if he was a traitor or not, was going to have some consequences. She doubted that it would be anything too major given how the man was a spy and PRT troopers where somewhat expendable compared to a cape, but she didn't want to waste their patience with her quite yet. Trying to fight the PRT off with only waste more of her time, time that could be used against the gangs.

But despite the risk, she didn't doubt that her night had been…productive. Lewis had still maintained some minor resistance out of fear of Coil, but she had quickly dissuaded the notion that he was scarier than she was. What he had told her was somewhat disturbing. Knowing that the PRT was incompetent was one thing, to know at a villain had infiltrated them and was using their resources to further his own goals was another.

She didn't doubt that the other gangs had spies inside the PRT, but she sincerely doubted that any of them had the job of keeping track of cape intelligence. Lewis' job at the PRT had been to record cape sightings and their powers. That meant that Coil could track new independent capes and co-opt or threaten them to work for him. It was somewhat terrifying to realize that if her power had been a weak one then that could have been her fate as well. She had to wonder how many capes that Coil might have under his thumb, willingly or not.

As her formless mass moved through the endless void a glint of yellow caught her attention. She turned her focus towards it and caught sight of…something. She wasn't sure what she could describe it as anything more than a howling shifting mass of darkness with two pinpricks of yellow amidst the lightless universe.

 _Fearling._

She moved in to get a closer look, but the creature darted back to wherever it came, once again leaving her alone. She contemplated going after it to find out more but chose not to. She could deal with that later when she wasn't dealing with the revelation of how far Coil's reach extended.

Unfortunately, Lewis didn't have much on Coil himself. Apparently, the man didn't trust his own employees, but apparently Lewis didn't trust him much either. He had been keeping track of everything he could about his boss on the off chance that he needed to protect himself from him, or to make himself useful if he had been caught by the PRT. She supposed that mentality of distrust and paranoia came from being a professional spy.

He knew that Coil apparently had a base in the city, but Lewis had never seen the entrance or location of the place. He had been blindfolded and shoved into a car with tinted windows for the entirety of the trip. The had only seen the inside of the base, but it had been well constructed and fairly large. While it didn't give her much of an actual location, it did eliminate most of her fist guesses.

Though she had to wonder exactly what Coil had been thinking when he decided to construct his own secret base. According to Lewis' impression, its layout had obvious been designed with the intention of being a base, which probably meant that Coil had built it himself. He had to realize that if anyone every found out about it then that would end up being a huge waste of resources. A secret base would only be worth it if it _stayed_ secret.

But she was willing to give Coil the benefit of the doubt that he might know what he was doing given the fact that nobody had apparently discovered his base before. Either way, it suggested that he had even more resources than she had originally thought. As far as she was aware even the Empire didn't have a base of that magnitude anywhere in the city, and they were supported by an international crime syndicate!

He had managed to give her the names of a few more of Coil's spies in the PRT. None of them were in as critical positions as he was, but it was still disturbing to see that one of the PRT special responders was on a supervillain's payroll. Those guys were trained to fight and take down villains with nothing more than a containment foam launcher. If Coil had Lewis and the likes of that, who else did he have under this thumb?

How much of the PRT had been subverted to a single man's will? What was even more concerning was the thought of him having one of the Protectorate heroes on his payroll. For all the Protectorate liked to portray themselves as incorruptible heroes, she knew all too well that was far from the reality of the matter. They were human and just as susceptible to greed as any other person.

Still, this was all just idle speculation. All she knew for sure was that Coil had managed to either subvert or plant a handful of spies into the PRT's ranks. She had been tempted to purge them herself, but then what? Until she found Coil himself all she would be doing was trimming the weed of corruption that had managed to worm its way into the local law enforcement. Coil would just hire new spies that she didn't know about, which would leave her right where she started.

No, the better choice would be to wait and use her knowledge of Coil's spies to try and gather more information on him. Frankly what she already knew about his was terrifying enough, and she didn't even know what his powers were exactly. Lewis had claimed that Coil had made a demonstration of his powers when he had first been hired through the flipping of a coin. He said that Coil had claimed he could "control fate" and proved his capabilities by flipping the coin on heads ten times in a row. He had apparently made a rather unsubtle threat that any action that he took against someone would be a virtually guaranteed success.

The show and threat had been enough to convince Lewis, but Boogeyman wasn't so sure. Flipping a coin to land on the same side was something that anyone with enough practice could accomplish on their own, without the assistance of powers. Even assuming that the coin itself wasn't being manipulated in some way, she doubted that his powers were as powerful as he claimed them to be. If it really was almost impossible for him to fail, there should be no reason that he wasn't running the city by now. If he truly couldn't fail, then nobody would be capable of standing in his way. There would be no need for spies or other covert tactics, he could just roll over all the other competition.

Boogeyman rose out of the alley shadows as she made sure that she wasn't in direct line with the sun's rays. It still stung somewhat to be out in the light at this hour, but is was far less than what it had been when she had still been invisible to all. Even in the nicer parts of the city litter still cluttered the damp and dreary alley like a second skin. She could feel the faint dreams of a homeless man lying under a sheer of cardboard, but she decided to let him be. Even though she was so tempted to take his dreams she allowed him to keep one of the few things that he had left for himself.

Even with a quick glance around, she couldn't tell exactly where she was, and she wasn't exactly in the position to go and check a street sign. At best, she knew that she was further north, where Coil and the Empire brushed up against each other and the PRT.

 _I wonder if I could get the Empire blamed for an attack on Coil_ , Boogeyman mused as she allowed herself to lean against a graffiti covered wall. If she could force the Empire and Coil into a minor skirmish she might be able to draw both parties out a bit more. She would have to try and keep civilians out of harm's way, but it was doable.

The uncertainty of Coil's power had influenced her decision in avoiding any direct engagements with him for the time being. Her previous experience with not knowing everything about her opponent had taught her a valuable lesson about caution. She would need to investigate Coil more thoroughly, but trying to find more information without letting him realize that she was onto her was going to be difficult, to say the least. She was going to have to…

Boogeyman froze at the sudden influx of emotions. It was a delicious mixture of human misery and terror, all wrapped up in a blanket of sorrow. She could feel the wave of human suffering growing stronger, and only then did she realize that it was coming from multiple people rather than one. Boogeyman tore herself from her position and dove into the closest shadow, driving forward with all available speed towards the location.

She tore out of the shadows with the speed of a woman possessed, emerging in an empty apartment building a few stories up. Boogeyman pulled the closed blinds open with a tug and winced a bit against as the sudden influx of light, but nothing could keep her eyes away from the image on the street below.

For a long time, she said nothing as she stared down, unable to move away from what she was witnessing. Even as the miasma of negativity rose to greet her hunger, she couldn't help but feel as if the dead bodies were somehow her fault.

* * *

Boogeyman wasn't sure how long she stood there staring at the bodies. Certainly long enough for the police to show up and cordon off the area.

The two teens had originally been strung up and hung from a flagpole that had been jutting out of the building. The Empire had clearly intended for them to be a warning of what would happen if they were crossed again. Apparently, the weight of the two teenagers had been too much and at some point, the pole had snapped, dumping the bodies on the ground. They were sprawled out on the uncaring pavement as if they had both decided to jump from the building. Blood from their wounds had dripped onto the concrete, staining the gray stone with their crimson fluids.

Even though they were long dead, Boogeyman could still see the expressions of pure terror etched into their faces as if they were made of marble. The source of their terror was quite clear given all of the wounds that covered their body like demented tattoos. These teens hadn't been shot or beaten to death, they had been methodically tortured and left to bleed onto the ground before having their necks broken with a noose.

How long had they laid there, unable to move or call for help as their strength left their bodies with every passing moment? The realization that they were going to be nothing more than another statistic in Brockton Bay's death toll must have terrified them to the bones. How many people had heard their screams of terror and had done nothing as the Empire carved up a few more victims?

Boogeyman could feel her hands curling into angry fists as a few of the police officers, specifically _white_ police officers, disregarded the two teen's bodies for the corpses of the obviously Empire gang members. Even if their brown shirts and shaved heads weren't a clue, the rather large swastika tattoo on one of their necks was. Unlike the teenagers, the two men and one woman had been laid out across the ground as if they were being prepped for a funeral service. Their eyes had been closed and their hands cross on their chests, as if their allegiance somehow made them worth that treatment.

From what Boogeyman could hear from the reporter down on the street below as she tried to raise her voice about the din of the assemble crowd, the two black teenagers had been inspired by her actions against the Merchants and the Empire and decided to do something themselves. The had apparently managed to kill three Empire goons before they had been confronted by a much larger group, including the parahuman Alabaster.

The confrontation had been a short one.

Boogeyman sneered as several civilians started to shout racially derogatory slurs out to the two dead teens as if killing them through torture hadn't been enough. She could feel her desire to go down there and show the sympathizers the fear that those two nameless teens had experienced. But such actions would only serve to hurt her goals in the long run, so she managed to restrain her impulse.

But someone _was_ going to pay for this.

As she contemplated the acts of vengeance that she would unleash on the perpetrators of this act she felt someone enter her range. Previous experience with Miss Militia had taught her the dangers of allowing herself to be lost in her thoughts and not pay attention to her surroundings. She could feel the mind growing closer, and while it did feel some trepidation, it clung to the notion of hope like a desperate child clawing at their favorite toy.

"Did you come here to arrest me?" Boogeyman asked neutrally, not even bothering to look away from the window as the door behind her creaked open. She could hear the floor boards groan as the man's weight settled on them. She could feel herself tense in anticipation of an attack, but to her surprise, the man apparently recognized her apprehension. To his credit, he stopped almost immediately, making sure to keep a safe distance between the two of them. He could easily cross the intervening space with a few steps, but by that time she could dive into the closest shadow and escape to safety.

"Nah, I figured that might be a pretty bad ice breaker," the masculine voice said from behind her. There was a good amount of humor laced in his words that were being used to mask his slight unease at being in her presence. Boogeyman allowed her head to turn around enough so that she could see the man from her peripheral vision.

Despite the fact that he was less than fifteen feet away from the parahuman that had emotionally broken a Ward and assaulted and mutilated a PRT agent, Assault still had a small smile on his face. His costume was almost the exact opposite of her, with streamlined armor covering his torso and shoulders. She wasn't sure what the fabric was made of, but it was thin enough to reveal a set of well-developed muscles underneath. A simple visor covered the upper half of his face, concealing his identity while still allowing him to express himself. His smile was the infectious sort that would have made most people break out into grins of their own at the exuberant energy the man exuded.

She wasn't one of those people.

Perhaps a few months ago, she might have been, in-between the jeering and torment from Sophia and Emma. During those times, she had had fantasies of heroes coming to the school to save the day and stop the bullies, but once she had found out Sophia's identity she had abandoned those notions.

She had learned her lesson.

"I didn't think the PRT would allow their oh so vaunted 'heroes' to associate themselves with villains," Boogeyman spat out as she turned herself back towards the sight of the two dead teenagers. "That is what they're calling me right? A villain."

She didn't doubt for one second that the PRT would try to smear her with all that they had, to lessen her in the eyes of the public. Time utterly wasted because she didn't care what the public thought about her. Had they ever cared about who she was before she got powers? No, she had just been another body to throw into the meat grinder that was Brockton Bay.

The PRT were fighting a battle that only existed because they wanted it to. No, because they _needed_ it to. It would have been funny if it wasn't so sad. It was even sadder that they had chosen to label her as an unrepentant villain after she did their jobs for them.

"I like to think that labels don't have to define who we are," Assault countered, artfully dodging the question about the PRT.

"What do you want?" Boogeyman asked in an attempt to cut straight to the point of the conversation. She might have enjoyed going back and forth with the man earlier, but right now she just felt tired. The weight and consequences of her decisions and actions were being thrust before her with all the subtly of Scion himself.

Before the casualties of her conflict with the gangs had been limited to acceptable targets like gang members or Sophia. But now two civilians had died because of her actions because they had wanted to do what she had done.

And now they were both dead because of it.

Because of her.

Even though she hadn't been the one to end their lives, it still felt like she was responsible for them. Would they have committed such a brazen act if not for being inspired by her actions? The sweet taste of victory crumbled to ash on her lips, as dead as the two boys before her.

"To talk," Assault said with a careless shrug. Boogeyman felt her lips curl back into an ugly sneer.

"Oh? Are you going to demand that I lay down my arms and submit to your broken authority?" she asked, her anger coloring her tone.

"It's not like I could keep you in place," Assault said as he crossed his arms. Boogeyman couldn't fault him for that logic. It wasn't as if he could somehow destroy every shadow in the room, but she would have thought he would have at least _tried_ to restrain her in some way. It was off-putting to realize that he wasn't following the script that he should have been. Even for all of her "compassion" Miss Militia had been more than happy to follow the rules with an unrelenting focus. Assault on the other hand? He seemed to be more that willing to bend or break the rules without an ounce of hesitation.

"I doubt your boss will be happy with that," Boogeyman said as she watched the police and medical officers start loading the corpses into body bags. As the crowd began to realize that the show was over they started to filter out. The relief of so many meals being removed as a temptation hit her so hard it was almost a physical experience. And by judging from the brief spark of wariness that entered Assault's mind he noticed her relaxing posture as well.

"Probably not," Assault agreed. Even with her back turned she could almost hear the wiry grin in his voice. "But I imagine that she wasn't very happy finding out she had a mole in her midst either."

"What makes you think I did it?" Boogeyman asked neutrally. She didn't really care if they knew that she was the one to attack Lewis. She just wanted to know what convinced him that she was the one to commit the act.

"I doubt Coil would out one of his own spies, Kaiser would have made it into a spectacle, and Lung wouldn't care either way," Assault said as he ticked his fingers down the candidates. "That really only leaves you and Faultline, and she wouldn't get involved in something like this."

"I'm surprised that you're not angrier about this, he was one of your co-workers after all," Boogeyman said as the last of the corpses were loaded into an ambulance. The stark white doors of the vehicle slammed shut with a certain finality. She could feel the apathy from the police and the EMTs as the prepared to pack away another case of Brockton Bay violence. This wouldn't be any different that the dozens of other murders that occurred, and it was almost a certainty the Empire would prevent it from going anywhere, if only to use if for propaganda.

A pair of black teens trying to kill whites? That was exactly what story Kaiser needed to get himself out of the hole that he had dug himself into. He would play it up the best he could to regain whatever legitimacy he had lost. She doubted that he could win over everyone, but by preying on the populace's fears he could convince enough. She knew all too well how easy it was to manipulate people who were scared for their lives.

"Well, I can't say that you haven't attacked anyone that hasn't deserved it," Assault said.

"Even Shadow Stalker?"

There was a brief flicker of…something too complicated and fleeting for her to make out. It almost tasted like regret, but there was something off about it.

"I can't say that she deserved being screwed with so bad that she was put on suicide watch," he said with just the tiniest amount of venom in his tone as if that would somehow make her feel bad about what she had done. "But I won't disagree that she deserved a reality check."

"I gave her what she wanted, a chance to prove that she was strong. It's not my fault that she failed in the end," Boogeyman shot back, her expression shifting into another sneer. She could feel Assault's indignation swell up at that, but instead of saying anything he let the silence carry on. She could practically feel the tension in the room weigh down on her as the last of the police cars drove off, leaving the cleaners to wipe away the crime. It wouldn't do for their shining city to be blooded, would it?

"You know," Assault started as the tense silence wore on. "I used to be a lot like you once."

This time Boogeyman did turn around to face the Protectorate hero, her curiosity piqued by his statement. "Mercilessly tormented at the hands of a psychotic Ward?"

There was a brief flare of genuine regret at her words, but she avoided clamping down on it. If he wanted to convince her to try and stop then at the very least she would listen to what he had to say.

"I wanted to make a difference in the world, to make a stand against the injustices that I thought where happening," the Striker said, a somewhat wistful tone worming its way into his voice.

"…What happened?" Boogeyman asked after a short silence, much to her own chagrin. She didn't want to speak to the man, but her curiosity had been roused.

"I realized that I was hurting more people than I was helping," Assault said, his tone becoming more restrained and melancholy. She could feel the regret that laced every word like a fine wine. She could felt the images pass through his mind of the culmination of all his work, of all what he accomplished.

"What did you do after that?" Boogeyman asked as she stared at the slowly fading chalk outlines on the concrete as uncaring cleaners whipped away the only evidence that such a tragedy had occurred. Not that it mattered to her, she would hold the weight of those on her shoulders for a long time.

 _They were the ones who were being stupid, not you._

She shook off the insidious whispers from the back of her mind. She couldn't allow herself to become callous to the suffering of the populace like the Protectorate had.

"I let Battery catch me and bring me in," he said, his eyes lighting up with mirth. He looked around the room in an exaggerated fashion, as if he was somehow making sure nobody was listening. He then said in a mock whisper, "Don't tell her that, I let her think she won."

Boogeyman wanted to laugh at the joke, but she still couldn't help but let some bitterness worm her way into her mind as she considered Assault's words. From the slight panic that he was experiencing her clearly noticed the way her face grimaced but managed to do an admiral job of keeping such emotions off his expression. Not that it helped much against her.

"Why don't we go down to the PRT and sort this whole thing out, huh?" Assault asked with a forced grin. She could feel his nervousness start to ebb and flow with the realization that something was wrong with her. She said nothing at first, allowing his unease to start filtering through to his body as he started to shift his feet out of nervous habit. Just when it seemed like he was about to start talking Boogeyman cut him off.

"So, you think I should be a coward like you?"

"What?" Assault asked with genuine surprise coating his words like a Carmel layer. She could feel his emotions shift themselves as he tried to keep his outrage off his face.

"When you were confronted with the results of your choices you ran away, _Madcap_ ," she hissed, earning a slight flinch from the man. "Oh, you felt sorry for them, but instead of doing something about it, you negotiated your way into a new life. You fashioned yourself into a hero and tried to forget everything that you did, good or bad."

Boogeyman turned around the face the man, her yellow eyes locking on to his paling face as each word struck at his heart like a jackhammer.

"I'm not going to be a coward like you," she declared as she pointed towards the street below. "I'm going to fix my mistake and make sure it won't happen again."

"…It's not that simple," he pleaded, his voice full of pain and regret.

"No, it's not," she conceded. She would give him that at the very least. This wasn't a simple thing that she was demanding herself to do. It could take years for her to finish this, but if giving up meant become a man like Assault, a coward who became a cog in the very machine he tried to resist?

That wasn't something that she could let happen to her.

"The Empire is going to suffer for this. Alabaster is going to pay for this," she declared to Assault and whoever was listening in on his radio. She could feel the emotions of strangers enter the building as they charged up the stairs, no doubt PRT reinforcements coming to help Assault. Not that they mattered, by the time they got up here she would be long gone.

"You're going to get more people killed," Assault shot back, his voice becoming a bit more heated. She could feel and see the tension in his body as he tried to hold himself back from lashing out.

"If the Empire kills one more civilian I will retaliate on them ten-fold," she said. Internally she couldn't help but shaker her head. Who used words like ten-fold? "Their so-called "Empire" will bleed rivers of blood."

 _The voices of billions screaming. The sky choking with smoke and fire. Oceans stained with crimson blood._

 _This is our legacy._

This is your future.

Boogeyman shook off the nightmarish images as Assault spoke once more.

"You can't kill Alabaster. Please, come with me and you can help us put him away for good."

"I'm sure you said that the last ten times when you caught him too," Taylor said with a sneer that slowly worked its way into a vicious grin. Even as she footsteps of the PRT troopers became audible and Assault finally started to move into an attacking position she allowed herself one last parting shot.

"Besides, who ever said I was going to try to _kill_ Alabaster?"

Assault shot forward with the speed of a bullet as she slipped back into the shadows. Even as the tips of his fingers brushed up against her cloak her form became entirely intangible and lost to the physical world. Assault was left grasping nothing but empty air as her Cheshire smile was the last thing to fade from existence.

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	22. Terror 3-4

**Enjoy!**

Terror 3.4

"Where is he?" Boogeyman asked. The man in her grip was floundering like a fish as she held him by the throat. She could see that his face was starting to turn blue as his clawing at her hand became even more desperate. She could feel the terror of life and death latch its icy tendrils into his heart as she tightened her grip once more. She could feel the man's warm skin twist under her grip as his pulse raced like a jackrabbit.

"Where is Alabaster?" she asked again, uncaring of the wild kicks that struck her form. They bounced off her like a breeze against a battleship. The only way he was getting out of this mess was if he gave her an answer or if someone came to help him.

Nobody was coming to help.

"…don't know…" The man managed to gasp out with what little breath he had left. His answer wasn't the one that she wanted, but he wasn't lying to her. She could feel his fear of not being able to answer her question truthfully as his imagination ran wild with the ways that she could harm him.

"Then what use do I have for you?" Boogeyman asked with an irritated growl. She was tempted to just kill him outright and be done with it, but as she prepared to snap his neck a thought struck her. A living victim would be far more useful than a dead one. Because really, she didn't need to find Alabaster, she just needed to draw him out into the open. Either way he was going to pay. Boogeyman increased the pressure on the man's neck, cutting off the man's oxygen flow. The Empire goon's struggling tripled in ferocity as unconsciousness loomed over him. His fear fueled resistance was a short-lived one as his lack of air finally overcame him. His hands slowly slid from their desperate clawing and fell to the sides like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Boogeyman allowed the dead weight to slip from her fingers as she turned her attention to the two who had been watching.

She could feel their dread encompass the entirety of their thoughts as their eyes locked on to their comrade's unconscious form. Boogeyman's nose wrinkled in disgust as a dark stain ran down the front of one of the man's brown pants. She could feel his regret over the swastika tattooed on his neck, a tattoo he had previously held with joy and honor, but now felt more like a brand.

The young woman next to him was in a similar catatonic state, eyes wide and unseeing as her chest heaved up and down in panicked breaths. Her skin was pale and ashen as her former comrade's body gave a few more spasms before finally settling down into unconsciousness.

"I hope that one of you have a better answer than he did," Boogeyman said lightly as she approached the kneeling neo-Nazis. The woman didn't even hear her, so lost in her fear that she had become distant to the outside world. The man on the other hand still had some wits left and shook his head up and down. He tried to form words, but all that came out of his mouth were half formed squeaks as this throat threatened to close up in terror.

"So. Where. Is. Alabaster?" Boogeyman ground out with a wide smile that showed just how irritated she was at the entire situation. This was the third group of Empire members that she had interrogated, and each one had been about as disappointing as the last. The first hadn't even known that he was in the area. The second had known and been waiting for orders from the man, but hadn't been given anything more than a general location. This third group was in a similar category, they didn't know where Alabaster was, but they knew he was in the area.

"I- I don't know!" the man shouted as Boogeyman formed a sand sword in her hand, bringing the tip a mere few inches away from his throat. She could feel his desperate desire to live as he tried to back away, only to be stopped short by a pair of her Nightmares. With the demonic horses looming over him the man trembled even more has half-formed words tried to escape his tongue-tied mouth.

Boogeyman let the man stew for a few more moments before letting her blade fall to her side. "Fortunately for you, I believe you." She dismissed her Nightmares with a wave, leaving the four of them alone in the alleyway.

"Y-your letting us live?" the man asked with such naked hope that for a moment she was tempted to change her mind if only to stamp it out. The Neo-Nazi swallowed nervously as the full brunt of her gaze zeroed in on him like a hawk on a rabbit.

"Yes, I am." Before the man could even let out a sigh of relief Boogeyman took him by the throat and drew him in close. "And if you want to stay alive, you're going to find Alabaster and tell him to meet me down at the Boat Graveyard. If he doesn't then I'm going to start killing Empire members until he comes out of whatever rathole his hidden himself in. And I'm going to start with _you._ "

The man paled at the rather explicit threat and made no move to resist her as she threw him to the ground. "Take your friend and go," she ordered. Boogeyman watched as the man rose shakily to his feet and pulled the woman up with him. She had regained some spark of awareness, but she was still very distant from everything. Their unconscious comrade was unceremoniously dragged across the concrete as the struggled to leave with all the haste they could muster.

"This has taken too long," Boogeyman grumbled as Phobia arose from the shadows beside her. She allowed her hand to absentmindedly pet her steed as she focused on other matters. She had hoped to spend more of the day going after Coil, but Alabaster's actions were completely unacceptable. The fact that it had happened meant that it had Kaiser's approval. The man wouldn't be stupid enough to let his minions have any wiggle room with what happened last time.

She had felt and heard the fears on the street of some of the Caucasian members of the city. Not all of them by any means, but enough that it was concerning. The Empire was playing up the threat of the minorities, using the two teens as examples of how the whites would suffer without their "guiding hands". Kaiser was trying to sway public opinion back to his side and it was working rather well.

"That was totally awesome!"

Boogeyman's head whipped around at breakneck speeds at the sound of the unfamiliar voice. She resisted the urge to throw a weapon at the stranger as she caught sight of the girl. She stood at the end of the alleyway with a huge grin on her face as she watched the Empire goons turn back with their tails tucked beneath their legs. The man dragging his comrade gave her a dirty look, but a quick snort from Phobia made him redouble his efforts and loose whatever color he had left. As the trio finally moved out of her sight she turned her full attention back to the girl.

She was quite pretty and Boogeyman was sure that she would have plenty of admirers once she matured a bit more. Her attire showed off plenty of her dark complexion while her hair messily flopped over her skull. It lacked form, but somehow that just fit with the girl's entire ensemble of ripped jeans and tank tops. A single streak of obviously dyed blonde hair cut through its natural black.

Boogeyman let the sand that had formed around her hands drop into nothingness as she urged Phobia to hold. "I'm sorry?" she asked, both as an apology or almost attacking her and for not entirely understanding what the girl was saying.

"You taught those chumps a lesson. You even managed to get that skinhead to piss his pants," the young girl said with an exuberance that put Boogeyman off balance. To hear someone talk so freely about her work in such a positive matter was…off-putting to say the least. As the girl jabbered on Boogeyman had to wonder how long she had been watching. Clearly for some time, but she hadn't paid the slightest bit of attention to her. She had clearly felt the girl's emotional signature, but she didn't pay her much mind. She had been so focused on extracting information that she had allowed herself to become complacent once more.

"Shouldn't you be with your parents?" Boogeyman asked, cutting through the girl's rambling. For a second there was a flinch of fear and true terror in the girl's mind that echoed onto her expression. If she had been anyone else she might have not caught it, the girl was good at concealing her emotions, she would give her that, but to her such deceptions meant nothing.

Boogeyman frowned as she traced that particular fear back to its source and held back a grimace. Intellectually she knew that doing bad things wasn't a trait restricted to the villain population, she did enough bad things all the time, but to see a parent so callously harm their own child was its own brand of evil.

 _Emily Jane_

"I don't need them," the girl said as she drew in on herself a little bit. Some of the energy and excitement that she had possessed fell back in on itself as she rubbed a bandaged on her arm. A rather fresh bandage. "My brother is trying to take care of me."

There was some real affection and trust there, certainly more than what she had for her parents. Boogeyman was tempted to pounce on that black cauldron of simmering resentment and fear and drag it out kick and screaming into the light, but she hesitated. The girl's unsure look was so different that what it had been a few second ago. She could feel the discordant feelings warring in the girl's psyche.

 _What was she doing?_ The question came to her as she forced that desire to feed back down. There was no reason for her to commit such acts to this girl, and yet the thought had come completely unbidden by her own hand. She wasn't here to make civilian lives worse, she was trying to make them better. A nightmare or two was acceptable, they could shake those off, but to be confronted by their fears in the real world was a different matter entirely.

"You seem strangely at ease talking to a villain. Most people would be running away screaming," Boogeyman said, her words slow and cautious as to avoid scaring the girl off. It was an odd experience, not try to scare someone. She hoped that this attempt would turn out better than the first two times. There was a brief hint of apprehension from the girl, so she clearly knew who she was dealing with, but there wasn't the bone-shaking terror that people usually felt in her presence.

"Should I?" the girl asked with a small smirk as if the entire concept was foreign to her. Boogeyman doubted that the girl was an idiot, which probably meant that she was just teasing her. For a moment, she could feel her indignation rankle as the memories of malicious laughter echoed through her ears. She managed to keep herself from doing anything rash, but she could feel her hand tighten into a fist. She knew that the girl wasn't mocking in in the sense that Emma and the rest of the trio had, but it still plucked her nerves.

She didn't like being laughed at.

"Yes, you should," Boogeyman said simply as she tried to keep the anger out of her tone. It wasn't a threat so much as it was a statement of fact. She didn't want to intentionally scare civilians other than the occasional nightmare, but there was no doubt that more than a few would be terrified of her. She had browsed some of the PHO forums, and while there were people supporting her campaign of terror against the scum of the city, many were calling for her to be imprisoned for her actions.

She supposed it was a bit ironic that the people when the people wanted the villains gone and the Protectorate did nothing they celebrated them. But when she did something to deal with the problem they cast her out and called for her head.

"Nah," the girl said as she casually strolled up to the parahuman. Boogeyman gave the girl a curious look as she brushed past her to Phobia. The living Nightmare seemed just as befuddled by the girl's atypical behavior as she was. The monstrous equine dipped her head as the girl started to brush her hand along the creature's snout.

"And you're just…okay talking to me?" Boogeyman asked, honestly curious. The idea of some random civilian just walking up and talking to her without an ounce of fear was off-putting. She had no clue what she was supposed to do in this situation. And for a moment she didn't feel like Boogeyman, the terror of the criminal underworld, but rather she was Taylor Hebert, the uncertain outcast.

She could feel the metaphorical gears grind in her head as she tried to work her rather rusty conversation skills. After being neglected for almost two years her ability to converse with people in a normal conversation had atrophied over time. The certainty that she felt when tearing people down was absent, only a twisting path of seemingly impossible decisions ahead.

Another victory for Sophia Hess.

"Why shouldn't I be?" the girl asked as the Nightmare purred under her ministrations.

"I'm…I'm not a good person. I've killed people," Boogeyman said, the words falling reluctantly from her lips. She would have been a fool to deny her actions. She had killed people in cold blood or shattered their psyche like a sledgehammer against glass. She knew that she wasn't a good person by any stretch of the imagination. But the thought of this girl giving up on this conversation with her twisted something in her heart. She didn't want to be alone forever.

The girl paused her stroking of Phobia's snout as a flicker of fear passed through her. The girl let her hand fall to her side as she turned to face her. There was a look in the girl's eye that reminded the parahuman of her own. The gaze that had seen things that would stick with them forever. She didn't know what the girl had seen, but she was willing to be it hadn't been pretty.

"…I knew one of the boys that got killed," she admitted, her voice soft and strangely contemplative for one her age. "Not like we were friends or anything, but I knew him. He was always talking 'bout how the Empire ruined his dad's life."

Boogeyman felt her throat go dry at the girl's words. She knew that what had happened to the teens was horrible, but she had been shielded by her ignorance of them. In a way, it was like finding out an Endbringer had wrecked a city, you knew that it was a horrible thing and you felt sorry for the people on the ground, but there was still an emotional distance between you and them. To hear them talked about as people and not as corpses twisted her heart.

"I guess…I guess I just don't really care about the Nazis," the girl said. It struck Boogeyman that despite the girl's exuberant attitude, she was still a scared child growing up in a city that would chew her up and spit her back out without hesitation.

"I've thought about beating them up too you know," the girl admitted as she rubbed her arms. I mean, it's not like I have power or anything, but sometimes I daydream about that."

"Why are you telling me this?" Boogeyman asked with a frown. She must have spoken a bit too harshly because the girl's expression nearly collapsed at what she interpreted as a dismissal. At the girl's heartbroken look, she hastily amended, "I mean, why are you confiding this secret with me? I mean, you don't know me."

"I dunno," the girl said, surprisingly subdued. She rubbed her arms nervously as she considered the question. She looked so different from the confident young woman who had shouted in glee at her brutalization of Nazis a few minutes ago. She looked like a young girl who still wasn't quite sure about her place in the world.

Like Taylor Hebert had been before well…everything.

"You seem honest," the girl said as she kicked a stray pebble in the dirt. The girl seemed to stare at the ground for a moment as if she was trying to gather her thoughts.

"I mean, the Empire keeps claiming they're protecting the city from people like, well, me," she said as she indicated herself in in a grandiose fashion that made Boogeyman's lips twitch towards a smile. The girl's grin fell flat as she continued, "But all they do is kill everyone who stands in their way."

The girl gave her a helpless shrug, "You kill too, but I guess you're more honest about it? I don't really know, but I'd rather have you haunting the alleyways than them."

"And the Protectorate?" Boogeyman asked, honestly curious as to what the girl thought of the "heroic" organization. While she had enough issues with the group to find them pathetic that didn't mean that others didn't still hold them above the muck they had sunk into.

The girl scowled as if she had just bite out of a particularly nasty lemon. "What have they ever done? They kept Shadow Stalker on the streets. The psycho nearly killed my br-muggers."

Boogeyman couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at the girl's slip up. "Your muggers?"

The girl's eyes darted around the alleyway nervously before standing up straight and looking the parahuman straight in the eye. "Yes, my muggers."

The two young women stared at each other for a moment before the younger of the two started to giggle uncontrollably. Even Boogeyman couldn't keep a few humorous chuckles from escaping her throat. She was pretty sure she knew what the girl was going to say but chose not to push it. There was no point in alienating her over something that Sophia did. For all, she knew Sophia could have attacked her brother because she was bored.

"Well, perhaps you should get back to your 'muggers'," Boogeyman said, a more serious expression plastered on her face. "The Empire's probably going to get pretty rowdy after I'm done with them."

The girl tilted her head, giving her a curious look. "What are you going to do?"

Boogeyman old raised an eye ridge at the girl's question. She could feel the realization and fear mix together in the girl's psyche as she swallowed nervously. The girl obviously knew what she was going to do to the Nazis after she got her hands on them, but killing was still killing. Even with an appropriate target there was a certain dread that most people felt when talk of killing came up.

"Yeah, I should probably get going," the girl agreed as she made her way down the alley with not quite worried steps.

"Hey," she called out, drawing the young girl's attention back to her. "If…if you want to talk again we can."

Th girl stared at her with an assessing gaze, and for a moment Boogeyman wondered if this was what people felt like under her gaze. She could feel her nervousness build up as she tried to keep her hands from twitching. It was almost ridiculous to think that she would be so afraid of the girl's answer. But the thought of her being rejected and cast aside once more weighed down heavily on her thoughts.

"I'd like that," the girl replied, a note of relief entering her tone as she rubbed her bandaged arm.

Boogeyman felt a wave of relief pass over her, scattering her darker thoughts. But her lips twitched into a slight frown as something suddenly occurred to her. "I don't think I got your name."

"I'm Aisha Laborn, the most amazingnest girl ever," she declared as she crossed her arms over her chest. A playful smirk darted across her lips as he eyes glinted in humor. Boogeyman let a chuckle worm its way out of her throat as she waved the girl off.

"Well, most 'amazingest girl ever' I'm sure your brother is worried about you," Boogeyman said with an amused smile.

"Nah, he doesn't even know I'm out here," Aisha said with a negligent wave.

"Probably because he thinks you're in school," Boogeyman said, a slight reprimand entering her voice. While her own experience with the education system had been utterly horrific, her mother would roll over in her grave if she supported truancy. Aisha flushed with embarrassment.

"Phobia," Boogeyman called out, drawing the Nightmare's focus back to her. "Why don't you make sure that Aisha makes it back to school safely. Without scaring anyone." She could practically see the irritation on the creature's face, but it complied anyway.

"I don't need a babysitter," Aisha said with a scowl. Boogeyman only raised an eye ridge in response.

"Even if that babysitter is a creature of fear made out of nightmares?"

"Well, when you put it like that…"

-

The Boat Graveyard had been a stain on the city as long as she could remember. Their towering husks of metal and rust where a constant reminder of the failings of the city, a scar that every Brocktonite carried with them. The shell of the oil tanker that she had commandeered loomed over her as if it could collapse at any moment. In the distance, she could hear the waves of the ocean slam against the submerged portion of its body, each one tearing a bit more of the ship off to sea.

"I didn't think that you would come," Boogeyman said as she rose up from her makeshift seat of scrap metal. Even as the noonday sun blazed outside the innards of the ship were a dark and cold place, perfect for her confrontation with Alabaster.

"I wasn't, but then you went and threatened by boys, and I can't have that," the skin bleached parahuman said as he entered into the shadow of the beached ship. A few more men followed suit, each one hefting a rifle or shotgun of some kind. Boogeyman let a small smirk play out across her lips.

"You know he doesn't care for you, any of you," she said, directing her gaze towards the assembled men. They hid their reactions well behind masks of indifference, but she could feel the uncertainty that her words inspired. The embers of doubt had been sowed into their heads long ago by the sadistic nature of their leader, all she was doing was kindling the flames. "What he did to those boys he would do to you in a heartbeat if he could."

"I'd be careful if I were you, girl," Alabaster warned as he pulled a blade out from his belt. The sharpened blade gleamed in the dim lighting of the ship's broke husk. Alabaster's eyes seemed to literally light up in delight at the prospect of forcing pain onto her. "You shouldn't spread lies about your betters. It isn't a very smart choice for your long-term health."

"Well seeing as I'm the one that will be killing you all today, I'd have to disagree," Boogeyman said with a serene smile.

"I'm afraid you're mistaken child," Alabaster said with a slight chuckle. The others apparently took that as their cue as they raised their weapons into a firing position.

"Guns?" Boogeyman asked with a raised eyebrow. "Skidmark and Miss Militia already tried those on me. They didn't work."

Alabaster blinked as if surprised, but she could feel that he was experiencing nothing but amusement. He let out a slow laugh, and for a moment Boogeyman could feel a sliver of doubt wedge its way into her mind.

"Did you really think I would come without some real firepower?" Alabaster asked with a mocking grin. Boogeyman felt a shard of uncertainty coil in her gut as two of Alabaster's group stepped forward. Unlike their fellow brown shirted comrades, they wore solid leather black jumpsuits. All they wore to conceal their identity were a pair of domino masks strapped around their eyes.

"No masks?" Boogeyman asked as the rest of the group started to slowly back away from the two apparent parahumans. While she didn't doubt that there would be some fools who would refuse to identify the two, there was no way such tiny things could protect their identities.

"Oh, there's no need for masks when your target's dead," the woman said, her smile calm and placid despite the thinly veiled death threat. Her partner's body started to smoke and loose form as it became a nebulous cloud of gas. Boogeyman watched as the now rolling Fog shrouded part of the ship from direct view, leaving only nebulous shapes. Even with her eyesight the smoke was too thick and churning to see what was inside.

The cloud of gas shot forward with a surprising amount of speed. Boogeyman found herself enveloped by the gaseous mass within seconds. She could feel it pushing against her nose and mouth, no doubt trying to suffocate her, but she had no such need for air. Fog might as well have been trying to drown a fish with water. She could feel the man's surprise at her survival emanate throughout the cloud, but he lacked any traces of fear at her apparent immunity.

Boogeyman felt the toxic smoke shift against her skin as something big and fast moved through the cloud, displacing the gasses. She looked to the side just in time to see a rather large but indistinct shape slam into her with the force of a wrecking ball. Boogeyman groaned as the rusted and worn steel of the ship's wall buckled around her. As she tore herself from the wall she watched as the cloud of fog started to drift towards her, slowly and methodically. As if Fog was mocking her, daring her to face Night in their domain. From the corner of her eye, she could see some of the men circling around the black cloud of imminent death, ready to blast her brains out at a moment's notice.

She knew that she could survive a shotgun blast or two, but it wasn't painless. And if they were able to overcome her durability with sheer numbers that wouldn't work much in her favor either. No, the best option would be to isolate the two sociopathic parahumans from their back up.

"Come and get me," she taunted as she threw herself into the ship's hallways. The structure had never been designed with the intention of people running inside, but with her ability to turn herself into liquid shadows the obstacles that would have hindered her were no longer an issue. Behind her she could hear Night's solution when confronted with such a small space.

Charge straight through it like a bull in a china shop.

The internal hull of the ship crumbled around her form as she charged forward with the speed of a creature possessed. Her partner was barely able to keep ahead of her so that her monstrous form would remain intact. As the duo started to gain on her Boogeyman shot up through a rather large crack in the ceiling.

Boogeyman regained her physical form just in time to see the entire shatter into a million pieces as Night tore her way through the steel as if it was made of paper. Boogeyman allowed herself to back up as the billowing smoke forced its way through the now massive hole. She could see a few indistinct shapes in the darkness, but she still couldn't make out Night's form. With the two parahumans standing over the gaping hole in the floor they now blocked off the only viable exit in the room.

Boogeyman doubted they could speak in their alternate forms, but she could still feel the smugness and satisfaction rolling off of them. They seemed to take an almost leisurely pace as they moved to eviscerate her. Too bad this trap was for them.

"Now," she shouted, her voice echoing through the ship's abandoned structure. Her Nightmares tore forth from the tiniest of cracks and poured out upon the two parahumans like a tsunami of sand. She could feel the flickers of shock as their forms were beset on all sides. Boogeyman wasn't sure if Night could be harmed in her current form, but her objective was Fog first. While the psychotic parahuman didn't have any vital organs to hit in his gaseous form, he could still be dispersed.

Her Nightmares ripped through the man's smoke body, tearing off pieces away from the whole. Within second they cloud that had covered half the room was now a quarter of the size. Boogeyman watched as whatever threshold they man had for his power was suddenly crossed, and all the remaining gas converged in on each other. Fog fell to the ground with a gasping breath and a dazed expression on his face.

"Kill him," Boogeyman ordered without a shred of remorse. She had read the death attributed to the man and his partner. There would be no mercy for him. The man didn't even have time to scream as one of her Nightmares tore apart his exposed throat with wild abandon. With her partner dealt with Boogeyman turned to face the now depowered Night.

…Who was still in her monster form.

Both combatants paused at the sudden turn of events. Boogeyman was forced to crane her neck up to feet Night's eyes, or at least what she thought were eyes. The pale white orbs didn't have anything to indicate that they could be used for ocular reception, but it was better than just staring at a blank face. Six arms shot out at random points on the creature's sides as if someone had just strapped a few arms on without a second thought. Talons that could have cleaved a man in two stretched out from her spindly fingers while a set of claws scrapped against the steel floor.

As the two opponents stared at each other with no small amount of surprise, Boogeyman watched as Night's already horrifying face stretched out into a parody of a smile. Hundreds of needle teeth skewed all across her mouth as she let loose a sound that was akin to grinding nails against a chalkboard.

Boogeyman didn't even have time to curse at the unexpected development as Night's digitigrade legs shot forward like a spring being uncoiled. A few of her Nightmares moved to stop her, but they were swatted aside like flied before a windshield. Boogeyman grunted as she was slammed through steel plating even as the creature's immense weight bore down on her. She tried to reflexively twist out of the way, but a hand the size of a dumbbell wrapped around her throat, pinning her to the ground.

While she no longer needed to breath, the standard human reaction of being choked out was still ingrained into her psyche. She thrashed against Night's grip like a fish against a fishing line and was about as successful. Despite her supernatural strength, Night's was just greater. She could see her arm quiver a little bit, but that was all her struggling amounted to. The Empire parahuman let out another bone grinding laugh as she brought one of her other hands in to finish the job. Boogeyman watched as the clawed appendage move slowly to piece her brains as if Night was mocking her.

"Let's see how you like it," she growled as a sword formed in her hand. At this range, missing Night's head would be all but impossible. Her assertion proved right as her blade pierced Night's head, eliciting a screech of pain from the parahuman. A black tar like fluid leaked from the wound, but Boogeyman's victory was short lived. With a sickening squelch, Night tore the offending blade from her face. The wound that Boogeyman had hoped would disable her was healed up in mere seconds, the featureless black flesh knitting itself back together. Her Nightmares tried to assist, but they wounds they made appeared to be nothing more than papercuts to Night.

"nICeTrY," Night's inhuman voice rang out, grating on the younger parahuman's ears. As the monster moved in for the kill Boogeyman felt a wave of rage pass over her, twisting her expression into an angry snarl. She could feel Night's brief flare of confusion as she wrapped her hands around the sociopath's arm in a vice grip and _pulled._

Night tried to resist as she was pulled into her own shadow, but she had so much of her weight pushing down on the younger parahuman that she couldn't stop herself from falling down. Boogeyman felt Night's talons loosen from her throat as the older woman thrashed and struggled as she was pulled into the realm of shadows. Within seconds both parahumans were floating in the endless void of nothingness. Boogeyman felt a smirk cross her face as Night's malformed head snapped around to get a good look at her new surroundings.

"My gift to you," she said, drawing the parahuman's focus back to her. She held out her arms as if she was gifting everything in sight to the Empire killer. "A place where you get to be a monster, _forever._ "

The last word came out as little more than a hiss, but Night apparently understood the sentiment. It was more than a little amusing to see such a vicious killer literally failing her arms in an attempt to close the distance between the two of them. The fact that she was utterly failing in her endeavor was lost on the woman.

"Bye," Boogeyman said with a wave as she moved to remerge from the shadows, leaving one of the most dangerous killers in the city alone in an endless void. As she worked on ripping Fog's head from his shoulders, she wondered if Night was capable of starving in her monster form.

She would check in a month or two.

As she approached the rest of the assembled Empire men she could hear the echoes of their conversation bounce off the walls. It sounded like they were betting on how long it was going to take Night and Fog to kill her.

 _Let's correct that misconception,_ she thought with a vicious grin stretched across her lips.

"I'm disappointed that you think so little of me," she said, keeping to the shadows and allowing her voice to echo through the ship's gutted hull. She could feel the tendrils of fear tighten around the group as they realized she was still alive. Boogeyman allowed herself to reform into a more solid shape a few feet in front of them, Fog's head in hand. Most of the group collectively paled at the sight of one of their heavy hitters down. A few of the braver ones raised their weapons to fire, but even they started to break out into a cold sweat.

"Don't worry, I'll be gentle," she hissed as her Nightmares leaped out of the shadows. A group of her Nightmares and herself versus some men with guns?

It was a very short fight.

-

Despite the fact that she had slaughtered all of his men and had taken him as her prisoner, Alabaster had yet to give into his fear. Oh, there was some concern mixed in there, but he still maintained a calm state of mind. Boogeyman supposed the man's inability to die was the core cause of that.

"You're going to tell me where Kaiser is," she started, only to be cut off by the man's mocking laughter.

"Or what? You'll kill me?" the skin bleached parahuman asked with an amused grin. There was a sharp gleam of amusement in his eyes as if the entire thing was a joke to him. I didn't seem to matter to the man that his former comrades were now nothing more than cooling corpses for the carrion birds. "We both know that won't work, now will it?"

"You're right," Boogeyman said with a smile. For a split second, she could feel a crack in the man's composure. A grain of uncertainty towards his safety. His smile twitched as he tried to keep is up, but she could feel a trickle of fear working its way down her spine. "I can't kill you."

Boogeyman leaned in, letting her breathless voice whisper into the man's ear. "But you of all people should know there are fates far _worse_ than death."

A great screeching filled the empty husk of the ship as a dozen of her creations emerged from the dark, their prize in tow. It was as old as the ship and looked just as worn, but it would serve its purpose. Chains thicker than a man's arm scrapped against the metal plating of the ship. What had once been shining steel was now rusted over from years of disuse. As the length of chain was dropped before them, Boogeyman turned to see Alabaster's face frozen in stark horror. She could feel his terror at the realization of what she was about to do to him. She was willing to bet that if he hadn't already lost all of his skin color he would have now.

"Y-you can't," Alabaster stammered as he stared at the cold chains that promised a fate far worse than death. Boogeyman rolled her eyes at the man's statement.

"You know, you villains and Nazis keep telling me that, but you never really give me a reason why," Boogeyman said as she picked up part of the chain to test it. Even with her strength she could feel the sturdiness of the link. This had been designed to hold ships in place, it would take more than a little of her strength to warp it how she desired. "I mean, you would have no problem doing this to me if you go the chance, would you?"

"Because…" Alabaster started, only to trail off as he realized that he had nothing to argue with.

"That's what I thought," Boogeyman said with a smirk as she started to pull the chain forward. She watched in amusement as the man's face twisted in rage at her dismissal.

"You think you're special?" Alabaster asked with a growl. "The Empire has killed dozens like you over the years. What you have here, it won't last against the might of the Empire. We will crush you, race traitor."

"Perhaps," Boogeyman said with a noncommittal shrug as she started to twist the anchor links around the man. "But you won't be around to see it."

It was interesting to watch as the man's mask of enragement slowly started to chip away as she twisted more and more of the chain around him. She could feel the trickle of fear in the back of his mind transform into a deluge as she finished binding his legs. The metal groaned in protest as she warped several of the links around each other to hold him in place, but they refused to break.

"W-wait, I'll tell you what you want to know," Alabaster said as she double checked his bindings. Boogeyman grabbed the parahuman by the throat and lifted him so he was face to face with her. It took a bit of doing with the extra weight of the chains, but she still managed to make it look rather effortless.

"Where? Is? Kaiser?" Boogeyman ground out as she stared the man down. Even if the surface was completely white like the rest of his body, she could still see the stark terror dancing behind those lenses into the soul. She could feel his fear of her warring with his loyalty to the band of murderers and criminals that he called his brothers and sisters.

"Never mind," Boogeyman sighed as she let him fall to the ground. "I'll just find out from someone else."

"No! Wait! I'll tell you what you want to know," Alabaster cried out, his eyes wide with a primal terror. As loyal as he was to the cause, Alabaster apparently valued his own suffering over that of his "comrades".

"Will you?" Boogeyman asked curiously as she stared down at the man.

"Yes! He's going to be holding a rally today in a warehouse on Overland Avenue," Alabaster said, the words pouring out of his mouth so quickly they were almost unrecognizable. Boogeyman gave the man a pat on the cheek and an unfriendly smile.

"Now that wasn't so hard now, was it?" she asked.

Alabaster swallowed nervously as he shook his head. "So, you're going to let me go?" he asked, his voice filled with such hope. She could feel that flame of hope flicker a bit as she gave him a cruel smirk.

"No," she said. Alabaster's face shattered into one of horror at the finality of her declaration.

'But you said…" the man trailed off, unable to force the words from his mouth.

"I never said that I _wouldn't_ throw you into the ocean, did I?" Boogeyman asked with a mocking smile.

"I'll kill you!" Alabaster roared as he trashed against his bindings with a ferocity that surprised the younger parahuman. His eyes glinted with unrestrained rage as spittle flew out of his mouth. She could see him tearing his skin against the chains, only for his power to reset the damage four seconds later. But for all his struggling the chains remained tightly bound. There was no way that he was going to break out of them.

"I'm afraid that Sophia already beat you to the punch on that one," Boogeyman said as she dragged the man along the ground. She couldn't keep a sliver of resentment from entering her voice despite her vengeance on her former tormenter.

Some scars would never fade.

The man continued to fling foul curses at her in both English and German as she pulled his body along through the maze of twisted metal that had once been a ship. But as she neared towards the part of the ship that was submerged underwater she could hear the previously controlled twinge of fear break into full blown terror.

"Please," the sadistic murderer uttered pathetically as she pulled a half-rusted door open. She ignored his pleas for mercy as she took a look down the shaft. With the way the ship had capsized on its side the compartment had exposed to the tide and had flooded as a result. She couldn't tell how far down it went even with her superb vision, but it was deep enough for her purpose.

"No! No!" Alabaster screamed in primal terror as she heaved him over the side and into the narrow shaft. It took a bit of doing with all his thrashing, but she was eventually able to squeeze his form into the hole.

"Don't worry," she said as a tear ran down the man's face for a few seconds before his body reset. She could see the hopelessness in his eyes as she prepared to confine him to a fate straight out of one of his nightmares. "Like you said, you can't die."

The look of utter horror on the man's face was priceless as she dropped him down the shaft. She listened for a moment as his screams echoed through the chamber, only to become muffled as salt water filled his lungs. The man sunk like a rock as the chains pulled him down out of sight and out of mind.

 _I should check in a week to make sure he's still there,_ Boogeyman thought as she sealed the shaft. The metal groaned in protest as she twisted it out of shape so that it couldn't be opened anymore. She doubted that anyone would come looking here, but it was better to be safe than sorry. She didn't want Alabaster to skip out on his own personal torment anytime soon.

"Come on," she said as she gathered her Nightmares together.

"We have an Emperor to dethrone."

-


	23. Terror 3-c

**Enjoy!**

Terror 3.c

"We're ready, sir," a young woman said as she adjusted her clipboard. A headset coiled around her head as she listened in to the various parties working on their finishing touches. Victor only gave her a passing glance out of the corner of his eye, never once taking his focus from the stage before him. He couldn't for the life of him remember her name, but she was loyal, and that was all that was really important in the grand scheme of things.

"Good," Victor said as he watched his subordinates scurry around like a hive of busy ants. The warehouse had been a bit of a rush job, but his crew had managed to pull it together. The once abandoned building now looked like a proper meeting place. Floorboards had been replaced and holes had been covered in an effort to make it as presentable as possible. Victor would have liked more time to work on it, but given how little time they had had to begin with it turned out fairly well. "Tell Kaiser that we're ready for him." The woman nodded in compliance and moved to go inform their Emperor that they were ready for his presence.

Victor was a man of many skills.

A bit of ironic statement given his powers, but it was no less true. Over the years he had stolen an impressive array of skills, everything from scuba diving to sharpshooting and everything in-between was his to command. And what skills he did not possess he would steal and make them his own. His hours spent volunteering at rest homes not only gave Medhall good publicity but allowed him to siphon of skills that had been honed over lifetimes by those nearing the end.

It wasn't as if they were going to find much use for their skills, so why should he let them go to waste?

But for all the talent that he had stolen, he could never satisfy himself. He always needed to steal more, to take everything. No matter how insignificant the skill he would steal it, even if it was something as mundane as sweeping a floor.

Prior to his trigger event, Victor had never had much skill in anything. He possessed no marketable talents that he could use to further himself, nor had he taken the time to try and learn any of them. The long hours of practice and study only ever managed to infuriate him. For all the skills he possessed, he could never quite get the hand of patience. Trying to sit down and gruel through dull lessons had brought him nothing but resentment towards his father for trying to teach him. When he had left his father to go out on his own and make his way in the world he had sorely underestimated the difficulty of such a venture.

With no real skills to his own, he had been forced to take menial jobs that were unbefitting of him. And even those jobs were short-lived and fruitless. They demanded perfection and when he made the slightest mistake they cast him aside like a broken toy. He had been lost an angry. Angry at everything and everyone. He had sought to make his name in the world and had been denied his prize, his right. He had lashed out at everyone and frequented bars to drown his sorrows out.

It hadn't been until he had met with the Herren clan that he had learned the truth of the world. That his failures weren't anything of his doing, but rather it was because of the minorities. They pillaged and plundered from the society that the whites had given them. They took what wasn't theirs and left the better deserving on the streets begging for coins. The niggers and chinks were all parasites on a perfectly good society, and so long as they remained in power he would never be able to obtain what was his.

And when he had triggered the night a group of Asian thugs tried to break into the Herren's house and steal their wealth, he finally had what he needed to take back what was his. He had let loose the full force of his power on one of the attackers that night, perhaps more so than he even had before. He stole everything from that chink and left him lying on the ground without so much as the ability to speak or stand. And he showed the world what that man really was, a worm who didn't have a single thing to contribute to society.

His induction into the inner circle of the Empire had been virtually guaranteed at that point. Since then he had proved himself to be a valuable asset to the organization. He obtained prestige and wealth and even a wife because of his affiliation to the Empire. He had everything that he ever wanted and then some. And in turn, he repaid the Empire with his loyalty and service.

Just as he was now.

The room held a quiet clamor as people went about final preparations. Most of his involvement in the planning and execution was done, all he had to do was make sure his subordinates were doing their jobs properly. Cameras were mounted into their proper positions as the lights were centered on the stage. The crowed before the elevated podium was more for show than anything else, a display of the might of the Empire. Unlike the degenerates of the ABB, they wore strictly regimented uniforms that demonstrated their allegiance to the organization. It made them seem less like a gang and more like a legitimate alternative to the PRT. A handful of the Empire's capes sat in the front row to remind the viewers of the strength that the Empire could wield against their enemies.

Victor let his eyes flicker to where his wife Othala sat next to Purity. His beloved had struck up a conversation with the woman in an effort to calm her nerves. Purity had been reluctant to rejoin the ranks of the Empire since her little tiff with Kaiser, but the man had a way of making people agree with him. Purity was here merely to provide a degree of power to the Empire's ranks, but only against criminals. Despite Kaiser's best efforts he hadn't managed to bend his ex-wife's will on that matter. It was of little consequence though, with the number of capes that they wielded they could crush the local Protectorate with sheer numbers.

Though if there were two capes that Kaiser had been less than enthused with dealing with it was Night and Fog. The two sociopaths were firmly under Purity's control, but more so they were Gesellschaft property. Kaiser had been all but against calling them up in order to avoid tangling himself even more with their European mother organization, but he had had little choice in the matter.

The Gesellschaft had all but ordered him to take the two capes in and "fix the mess that he had made". While he could appreciate the extra firepower, they brought Victor knew that the organization was more concerned with having a foothold in America than the cause itself. They wanted to expand their operations and their similar ideologies with the Empire provided them with the means to do so. It had been a beneficial arrangement in the past during the Empire's fledging days, but now that they were self-sufficient it felt more like a chain around their necks. And one that could tighten its hold and drag them all down at a moment's notice. The two capes would serve them so long as their masters told them to. A tenuous alliance at best and a gun to Kaiser's head at the worst.

But it wasn't as if Kaiser could say no, at least not publicly. The Gesellschaft were a dangerous enemy to have and that was the last thing that they needed with the entire city circling them like sharks in the water.

Hopefully this event would be as successful as they hoped.

As the twins took their positions on each side of the podium Victor started to signal the others. Lights were dimmed as the whole focus of the building was placed on the now approaching Kaiser. In his knightly armor, the man looked every bit the king that he was. A pity that they had to go to such lengths to convince the rest of the city of this matter. But he could recognize that the actions of their rouge members had only inflamed the public against them. So long as they denied the truth of the minorities they would deny the light that the Empire so willingly gave them.

Still, an action like this took on a risk of its own. Not so much from the application, their agents in the media ensured that. The local news stations would find themselves cut out as their feeds were overwritten by the Empire's message. But rather the risk was the message that this speech would send underneath the promise of security and protection. For their Kaiser himself to deliver a speech to the unwashed masses himself implied a certain level of vulnerability. A strong organization didn't need to make proclamations of their strength. They just crushed anyone who would deny them their right to power. Their enemies would be crushed under their heel like grains of sand. The strong had no such need for platitudes.

No, this move was a gamble to try and turn back the public's sympathies in their favor. Their narrative of the two teens with no regard for human life certainly helped, but the needed to make an official statement beyond what they already had. They needed to show the world that the Empire was still standing, and would continue to endure. Kaiser's speech would work to convince the populace that the Empire's way was the right way. He and Crusader had worked day and night on Kaiser's speech to make it the best they possibly could. With his countless stolen skills of public speaking and Crusader's natural talent, they had managed to put together a rather good speech in his humble opinion.

With some luck, they would be able to bring the Empire back into good graces with the people and alienate them against the Protectorate and the Boogeyman. He would personally love to see if that race traitor could survive her brains being blown out by a .50 caliber sniper round. She had caused far too much trouble to be anything but an enemy to the Empire and was freakish enough that nobody of worth would care about her. Perhaps if Alabaster wasn't successful he could put in a request. But Victor pushed such thoughts aside as they cameras flicked on and the live recording began.

It was a bit of a risk sending this live through the media outlets given that someone could possibly triangulate their position. But at the same time, having a recording speak wasn't nearly was effective as a live speech by their Emperor. The people would be more willing to flock to a man who would take the time to speak to them directly instead of hiding behind an army of editors. The people of Brockton Bay were going to meet the real Kaiser. As the lights on the cameras flicked on Victor gave Kaiser a discreet signal.

"Fellow citizens of Brockton Bay," the man intoned in a commanding and dominating voice. What few whispered remained in the room were snuffed out like candles as their lord began to speak. "We have endured many obstacles in this past week. The knowledge of the Protectorate's corruption. Traitors in the ranks of the Empire. This rise of a monster who would see all good work undone. This Boogeyman would see us all thrown back into the dark ages, a time of uncertainty and unrest. She would see us all crushed under the heel or her tyranny of fear."

The room was utterly silent as Kaiser drew them in with his charming words. Somehow despite his helm, he managed to meet the gaze of everyone in the room and even those watching from their screens. This was how Kaiser worked, he got people to join their ranks by convincing them of how they could help the cause and how the cause could help them. They wanted safety and power and he delivered them both.

"But the Empire still stands as a pillar of the community against those who would see the rightful inheritors of this city ground beneath their heels out of jealousy and hunger. They would see themselves the masters of this fine city as they cast out all who oppose them. The two murders that slew several of our brothers and sisters were merely the first. More will come, and they will not stop until we are all dead," Kaiser said as his voice rose in intensity. The man paused as he allowed the audience a moment to digest his words with quite murmurs of agreement.

"We _cannot_ allow this to happen," Kaiser declared as he slammed his fist into the podium. As the wooden stand shook metal spikes shot out from the front of it as a display of Kaiser's might. A reminder to the people of the power that the man could bring to bear. "The Empire will stand against those who would seek to bring such an injustice as the hardworking people of this city. We are the protectors of those who need protection. Where the Protectorate has failed you, we will not. Where the PRT has abandoned you, we will not. We will not bend to a degenerate dragon who would burn you to ash for the smallest offense. We will not fall to a venomous snake who hides like a coward. We will not break to a monster that would shatter your mind with a smile."

Victor could feel the air in the room charge with the intensity of Kaiser's speech as he appealed to the base desires of the audience. Though he couldn't see what the people viewing this in their homes might be feeling, he could imagine that more than a few of them would be nodding their heads in agreement. They wanted protection, and the Empire was more than willing to give it to them.

"We are the Empire. We have protected this community since the time of our fathers, and we will continue to do so to the time of our children's children," Kaiser declared. Despite the fact that he had helped write up the speech, Victor couldn't stop himself from being drawn into Kaiser's almost hypnotic voice. The way he moved and spoke was the culmination of a lifetime of experience in public speaking. It was Kaiser who brought this speech to life from the page, who turned it into something more than just empty platitudes on a page.

"The Empire will not break!"

A roaring cheer erupted from the audience as Kaiser shouted, raising his fist up into the air.

"The Empire will not falter!"

Another roar that Victor himself joined in. He could feel the negativity that had been present at the beginning of the meet being banished away by Kaiser's promises. This was the leader they would follow to the end for. This was the leader who would give them all that they deserved. A chance for a better life, unmolested by the sub-humans that infested every nook and cranny of the city like the rats they were.

"The Empire is-gurk!"

Kaiser's proclamation was cut off mid-sentence as a massive blade erupted from his chest, tearing upwards towards his throat. Victor could only stare with mounting horror as the internal organs of his leader were carved into a fine paste. Blood and viscera ran down from the blade like a waterfall. Victor watched as the raised hand of Kaiser fell limply by his side as the blade was wrenched out of his form. The man let out a gurgle as blood poured out of his mouth and dribbled down his chin. The plating that had protected him through so many battles had been punched through like a pencil through paper. He could see the shock and fear in the man's eyes and he struggled to keep himself upright against the podium, but it was like trying to balance an egg on a tightrope. White shards of bone clattered to the ground while Max's body collapsed into a heap. As the blood started to pool around his form the entire building looked up to the perpetrator at once.

Boogeyman stood behind where their leader had once been, her wretched blade still in hand as she looked down upon the body with contempt in her eyes. As she turned her gaze from Kaiser's cooling corpse back to the audience Victor could feel a chill go down his spine at the intensity of the coldness in her yellow eyes.

There was no mercy in those eyes, no compassion or forgiveness for what she had just done. There wasn't a single ounce of regret in her body for killing the man that would lead them all to a glorious new future. She had just strangled the hope for Brockton Bay as a member of the Slaughterhouse might do to a child. The rest of the room seemed as stunned as he was. Even the well-trained twins didn't move, too frozen in shock by the sudden and dishonorable death of their leader, cut down as if he was nothing more than grain on a field.

He watched as her eyes roamed over the crowd, and for the briefest moments, he caught her gaze. There was something hidden behind those remorseless orbs, something that only he will the body reading skill from dozens could notice. Only the barest traces of the madness leaked out from behind her, like a shadow attached to her waist.

She would kill them all.

Her lips curled back into a sneer as she uttered one sentence. Her voice didn't have the same passion or zeal as Kaiser. There was no heat or care to her words. They were cold and clinical, like a doctor staring at a cadaver. Victor could feel a chill go up his spine despite himself as the entire temperature of the room seemed to drop like a rock.

"The Empire is _dead._ "

All hell broke loose.

People started screaming in panic as many rushed for the doors, eager to escape the gaze of the creature that had just killed their leader. Some moved to attack the girl, holding their loyalty to the Empire in a higher regard than the fleeing cowards. But they were stymied as the panicking mass made movement almost impossible.

The twins moved to kill the interloper that had just slew their charge, but as their spear and sword moved in for the killing blow the girl was no longer there. Her form twisted into a massless shadow as she slithered across the ground like a serpent. Fenja and Menja nearly struck each other as their quarry disappeared from their gaze. He could see them searching the room as they started to grow in height, but they wouldn't be able to take their full height in such an enclosed space.

A multitude of Boogeyman's monstrous horses erupted from the shadows as if they were the hordes of hell. The panic only grew to even higher heights as the monsters attacked the assembly with callous abandon. Flesh was torn from flesh and bones were crushed into a fine powder. With once orderly room had become a disaster in a scant few seconds.

"Cut the feed," Victor shouted over the din as he pulled his pistol out and shot one of the horses. The creature's head exploded into a billion bits and its body fell apart into a pile of sand. "Cut the feed!" Victor screamed over the din. They couldn't afford any more of this to get on the air. What few members of the camera crew that didn't run moved to cut the feed, but there was no telling how much had already gotten out.

But none of that was Victor's concern as he waded his way through the death field to reach his wife. A brilliant flash of light filled the room and Victor was forced to cover his eyes even as the creatures screamed in panic. Through his fingers, he watched as many of the monsters closest to Purity collapsed into dust as the brightness of her light struck them. They boiled and burned like eggs on a sidewalk.

Victor felt a savage grin pass over his face as another creature was felled by his nine-millimeter pistol. While the race traitor had the element of surprise she was on the backtrack now. Purity couldn't unleash her full power in fear of bringing the building down on top of them, but even weakened her powers proved to be adept in destroying Boogeyman's minions.

"Augh!" Victor looked up to see Purity clutching her now bleeding arm as the spear that had struck her vaporized into nothingness. It didn't look that serious from where he was standing, but Purity's glow made it difficult to make out any details. The Blaster threw out her unharmed hand and fired a beam at the now exposed Boogeyman. The young parahuman managed to dodge the full brunt of the blast, but her pained scream echoed through the building as she slid back into the darkness. With her foe apparently vanquished, Purity started to float down from her position above the chaos to avoid being such an obvious target.

"Victor!"

Said parahuman turned around to see his beloved wife fending off one of the equine monsters with a chair. Victor didn't even have time to blink as he unloaded several rounds into the creature, ending its existence with a screech of pain. "Othala," Victor cried out as he rushed over to his out of breath wife. His eyes widely searched her form for any injuries. To his immense relief, he found none.

"We need to leave," Othala said, her eyes wide with fright. Victor wasn't one to walk away from a fight, but he didn't survive this long in Brockton Bay by being stupid. Even with Purity's help, the creatures were still taking a chunk out of their forces. If they tried to fight it out here it would only end in death and destruction.

"You're right," Victor muttered as he reloaded his pistol. Normally Victor wouldn't think to give an order while a superior was in the same room as him, but Krieg was gone on Gesellschaft business and he didn't see any of Crusader's ghosts in the fight. If Crusader was down and Purity was refusing to give orders then it fell to him to ensure that his brothers and sister lived through this fight.

"Purity!"

The floating parahuman swung her head over to the sound of his voice, only barely audible above the din of the fight.

"Clear a path for us," he shouted, waving his hand towards the exit sign. Having apparently understood his words the Blaster proceeded to carve a huge hole into the wall with her power, widening the exit for the clamoring mass. More horses fell to her powerful beams, but at that point, they were starting to retreat. Whether it was because of their resistance or because of Kaiser's death Victor wasn't sure, but he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Move, move," he shouted, desperately waving his hand towards the gaping hole in the wall. Those in his immediate vicinity heard and heeded his words as they made a rush for the exit. As they moved even more of the men and woman recognized what was happening and made their way to the exit. The previously disorganized mob became a charging stampede as they simultaneously made for the exit.

"Eep!" Othala cried out in surprise as Victor threw her over his shoulder. He was sure he would get some flak from her for carrying her like so, but his primary concern was getting her out of her. She could be angry with him after they were all safe and sound. Even with the additional weight, Victor was more than able to keep up with the unburdened masses.

The sunlight and open air were welcome as the oppressive monsters halted in their tracks. Victor looked back to see the parahuman herself standing on the edge around the hole with a murderous glare etched onto her features. She looked as if she wanted to strangle them all with her bare hands. But for whatever reason, the cape refused to make the chase. Even with a large group of Empire members a few dozen feet from her she remained rooted in the shadows of the building.

Victor let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding as the young woman bled back into the darkness from whence she came. Her minions followed suit, leaving nothing behind but dead bodies and piles of sand as proof of her presence. Some of the others began to cheer at the sight of their foe retreating, but Victor knew that this was no victory.

The taste of defeat stung like bitter ash in his mouth as he gazed out at the crowd. He could see Fenja and Menja were unharmed as the brushed the dust of the enemies off their armor. Purity was wrapping her arm with a shirt that someone had lent her, but she didn't look too perturbed by the injury. Othala looked a little shaken as he set he down on the ground, but was otherwise unharmed. But as he gazed out to the crowd Victor saw no sign of Crusader or his ghosts, and even if the man was alive, Kaiser was dead.

"We need to leave," Victor said, raising his voice over the din. A few tricks that he had picked up helped him project his voice over the fearful crowd. They couldn't stay here, the Protectorate and PRT would be on them shortly. There was no way that even they could miss something like this.

There was a quite clamor of agreements as the men and women moved to their designated leaders. They would disperse to different safe houses and regroup at a later time. Even with the sheer panic that still gripped at their psyches, they were well trained enough to remember their training. With some luck, they could avoid being caught by the police or PRT.

As the started to make their way through the streets and back alleys he tried to not look back towards the warehouse.

For the first time in a long time, he wished he could learn how to forget something.

* * *

"What's going to happen?" Othala asked. Her mask was set to the side as she gazed up at him with her fear filled eyes. Their masks laid to their side as they spoke as husband and wife, not parahumans. The room was locked and a group of loyal soldiers were guarding the main room, there would be no chance to disturb them here.

"I don't know," Victor admitted as he paced the room. Under ideal circumstances, Crusader or Krieg would take reigns of the Empire until a more permeant solution was found. But with Crusader dead and Krieg in Europe, this was a less than ideal situation. He supposed that Hookwolf could take charge, but the man was a dumb brute and had no talent for administration. The man would tear the Empire apart by fighting everyone in his path until they were dead. Victor could appreciate the man's enthusiasm, but he lacked the subtly in order to further the political agenda of the Empire.

No, the best option would be to have himself run the Empire for the time being, at least until Krieg returned from his meeting with the Gesellschaft. It wouldn't be an easy task by any stretch of the imagination, the Empire was bleeding and would be beset by all of its enemies. Even as degenerate as he was, Lung wasn't stupid enough to ignore an opportunity like this. But it wasn't as if he had much of a choice in the matter. Regardless of his personal feelings, he had a duty to see that the Empire survived this calamity. They would not let Kaiser's death be in vain.

"We'll need to rally the men," Victor said, his mind made up. The Empire was going to have to defend its borders from those that would see them crushed. They would have to pull back on a few operations, but if they hunkered down they could survive the deluge.

"We'll get through this," Victor said softly as he took his wife's trembling hands into his own. A soft kiss on her forehead calmed her nerves as he put his own mask back on. His wife followed suit, sealing her face behind the identity of Othala. When they stepped out they needed to be strong for their soldiers. They couldn't be seen as afraid or uncertain. They needed to be the rock on which their men held their ground. They were the Empire, and so long as they remembered that they would never lose.

The door swung open as Victor stepped into the main sitting room. Guns and ammo were stacked to the side as the assembled men and woman paused their work. Victor watched as each one of them looked to him for guidance and safety. There was a sense of helplessness that hadn't been there a few hours ago. Like a group of children who had lost their parents these soldiers had lost their commander, their leader. Something like this would take years to get over, but they had to be strong.

He had to remind them to be strong.

"We have been wounded," Victor said, his voice heavy with regret. There was no point in trying to deny it, they _had_ suffered a great loss at the hands of Boogeyman. A setback of this magnitude would take years to recover from. The fact that their leader's death had been televised _live_ across the city didn't help matters at all. If their own leader couldn't be protected in the heart of their kingdom, then what hope did they have.

Victor shook off such thoughts as he returned to the situation at hand. Now wasn't the time for uncertainty or fear.

"But we will endure," Victor declared, his tone full of confidence. He watched as a few of the men stood up a little taller and prouder. They would no bend under the might of their enemies, they would not break in the face of adversity.

"We will-"

Victor found himself cut short as a man appeared directly in the center of the room. Victor felt a chill go down his spine at the sight of one of the most violent parahumans in the city. A grinning demon mask glared at him as the man pulled something on his waist. There was a brief flicker of movement to indicate that the main Oni Lee had already teleported away, leaving behind a lifeless suicide bomber in his place.

"Move!" Victor shouted as he desperately threw his wife to the side. If he had been half a second faster he might have been able to make it out of the grenade's range, but it wasn't the case. As the duplicate Oni Lee's bomb detonated, everything within ten feet froze solid as their molecules were brought down to just a hair above Absolute Zero. For a brief second Victor could feel his body go numb as his internal organs were frozen from the inside out, and then nothing.

* * *

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	24. Terror 3-d

**Enjoy!  
**

Terror 3.d

For the first time in a very long time, Victoria Dallon wasn't one hundred percent sure of herself.

Being raised into New Wave as an expectant hero had given her a level of certainty that most people didn't possess. She knew that what she had been doing was right and that the villains were evil. Her mother had taught her that at a very young age, even before she got her powers.

She had always known that when she got powers she would use them to help the city against the growing threat of the gangs and make a worthwhile contribution to society. And for a time, she had. She had busted heads and thrown gangsters into prison and stopped parahuman villains from wreaking havoc onto her city. She had been content with the certainty of her place in the universe.

But then Boogeyman came along.

To say that the new parahuman had blind sighted the entire city would have been an understatement. She had come out of nowhere and in less than a few weeks she had reshaped the politics of the city more than any other hero or villain had within the last few years.

Her methods might have been brutal, but one would have had to have been a fool not to recognized the results. The Merchants, a gang that had been a plague on the city since time immemorial were wiped out in the span of a single day. A few independents were trying to snap up the remnants of the gang, but they were few and far between. They were more prone to brawl amongst each other rather than against those that would see them gone. And now…this.

Victoria hit the play button again and allowed her television to replay the death of Kaiser in full HD glory as his chest exploded outwards. It was almost anticlimactic to see a cape that had been active since before she had been born drop over dead without so much as a fight. The reign of the Empire's Kaiser ended not with a mighty bang but with a pathetic whimper.

"How many times are you going to watch that?"

Victoria tore her gaze away from the television to see her younger sister join her lounging on the couch. The brunette slouched against the fabric with a sigh and for a moment Victoria almost wanted to ask if she was sick. A set of heavy bags trailed underneath her eyes, the only sign of how exhausted her sister really was. She tried to hide it from them, but Victoria knew when her sister wasn't feeling well.

These last few days had been hard on her with the influx of injured gang members being sent to the hospital. Boogeyman's attack on their rally and the ABB's subsequent bombing of their holdings had left a lot of people dead or hurt. Amy was working overtime at the hospitals, trying to keep up with the demand. Victoria was almost tempted to tell her to stop and take a break, but her sister could be as stubborn as she was at times, outright refusing to leave while the screams of the dying still haunted her ears.

Victoria knew that it wasn't healthy behavior for his sister, but trying to stop her would be even worse. Her trips to the hospital were one of the only ways that she could feel as if she were contributing to the city aside from healing her family members.

"It's just a little hard to take in. I mean, he's Kaiser," Victoria said as she waved the remote. For as long as she could remember Kaiser had been the face of the Empire, the man who held everything together. She had to admit that he could be charming when he wanted to be, and equally as vicious to his enemies. To know that such a long-lasting member of the Bay Cape community was dead was…unsettling.

It was a stark reminder that there were no guarantees in this business, that anyone could be killed. At the same time, it was a heartening reminder that the gangs that plagued the city weren't undefeatable, they could be killed and removed from power.

They could be beaten. They could be _killed._

"It's just weird that I'm going to be able to wake up tomorrow and not have to worry about him," she said as she clicked the television off. The reporter wasn't going over anything she didn't already know. "Did they have you confirm his identity?"

Amy let out a defeated sigh. "Yeah, the leak was right, he was Max Anders."

Victoria couldn't hide a grimace at the confirmation. The PRT didn't tend to release villain identities after they were arrested or killed if only to protect whatever families and friends they had outside of their costume life safe. But a few hours after Kaiser's cold corpse had been hauled back to the PRT's morgue someone had leaked that Max Anders was indeed Kaiser. The revelation had upset more than a few individuals.

Max Anders had presented himself as a pillar of the community, an entrepreneur who hadn't given up on the decaying city of Brockton Bay. Medhall brought hundreds of jobs to the teeming masses of the city and helped keep them from sinking into financial poverty. They provided much-needed medicine and drugs to the overworked hospitals of the city. To know that had all been to ease the public into trusting the man so he could further his illicit goals was disheartening, to say the least.

The entirety of the Medhall Corporation was undergoing a rather thorough investigation from what she heard, with the PRT fighting over the corporation's corpse with the FBI and IRS. She had also heard that the CIA was trying to butt in given the Empire's relationship with the Gesellschaft. Dozens of high-ranking members were probably going to be brought up on charges as there was no way that Kaiser could have supported the Empire without their knowledge. Dozens more of the lower level workers were throwing in their resignations with the knowledge that the company that they had been working for supported a Neo-Nazi gang.

"Who do you think leaked it?" Victoria asked as she shifted her body so that she could get a better look at his sister. There were quite a few people claiming that Boogeyman had been the one to leak the information given what she did to Shadow Stalker. While there was certainly some truth to that, Victoria wasn't so sure. She didn't claim to be an expert on Boogeyman, but she doubted there would be any confusion as to who made the leak if she had been the one behind it.

No, she would have announced it to the heavens with Kaiser's head on a pike, waving it around for all to see. She wouldn't care about the repercussions any more than she did Shadow Stalker's reveal. She wouldn't have tried to hide her name from the leak and let it loose with a series of well-placed whispers. This spoke of someone who wanted to have Boogeyman take the fall for their own actions while remaining anonymous. A new faction seeking to subvert the Empire? Lung wouldn't have bothered with something so subtle and Coil was too small time to risk the wrath of the Empire like that.

"Don't know, don't care," Amy said as she closed her eyes for a moment. Victoria felt a pang of guilt for the state that her little sister was in. The ABB's bombing run on the Empire had left dozens injured, mostly gang members with a few civilians in the mix. The hospitals could barely keep up with the demand and had been requesting Ames more and more lately, particularly when they came across some of the more exotic explosions. Victoria couldn't suppress a full body shiver as the memory of a woman with half of her body turned to glass was etched into her mind. The woman had been lucky to live, but others hadn't been as fortunate.

An image of Amy in the woman's place flashed through her mind like a bad premonition. Victoria could feel her gut churning at the thought of her sister going through the horror that woman had. The seeds of doubt that had been planted by Boogeyman were starting to sprout, fed by the growing conflict in the city.

 _You only need to lose once._

* * *

"So, what are we going to do about the ABB?" Aunt Sarah asked as they settled down into their dinner. Typical New Wave meetings were rather informal compared to the Wards or Protectorate. It wasn't uncommon for them to eat while they were doing it, but Victoria couldn't bring herself to take part. She just rolled her food around with her fork as she listened to the adults.

"We need to put away whatever pet Tinker Lung has in reserve," her mother said. Victoria couldn't help but grimace at the mention of the ABB's new tinker. They were proving to be quite the game changer for the ABB, giving even the lowest of their members the power to take down capes. It significantly shifted the balance of power towards their favor.

"Are we sure we don't want to finish the Empire up first? I know these bombings are bad, but if we give the Empire time to lick their wounds then they might pull back from this," her Uncle Neil said as he settled into his seat. Victoria knew that her uncle was only playing the devil's advocate, but the thought of letting the ABB getting away with these bombing made her want to hit something.

"With the Empire going to ground trying to track them down will be even harder," Mom said with a shake of her head. "If we let the ABB gain ground they'll only become even more powerful, and the more time we give their Tinker to work, the harder it will be to fight them."

Victoria felt a chill go up her spine as she considered what Mom said. She hadn't thought about that. If the ABB's new Tinker could do things like turning people into glass now, what could she do three months from now? For all, they knew she could make a bomb that could wipe out the entire city. "That would be bad," Victoria said as her throat went dry. Perhaps not the most eloquent observation, but it was none the less true.

"Which is why we need to go after the ABB first," Mom said as she cut up her steak.

"That's all well and good, but what about Lung?" her older cousin Crystal asked. Everyone turned to stare at the blonde as she shrugged helplessly. "Look, all I'm pointing out is that if we are serious about taking down the ABB we're going to need to deal with Lung eventually."

Victoria grimaced at the thought, and she could see her fellow family members doing the same. Lung was an absolute pain to fight because time was always on his side. The more he fought the stronger he got until nobody could stand against him. His opponents could be swept aside with as much thought as a hurricane might give an ant. While she had never fought the man at the height of his power she knew that when he had first showed up in the Bay he had utterly thrashed the local Protectorate and New Wave in a display of his strength. She had watched the videos of the fight and they might have well been trying to put a fire out with gasoline for all the good they did.

And that was _with_ the Protectorate assisting New Wave. Victoria couldn't even begin to imagine trying to fight a ramped-up Lung without Protectorate back up. But with the way that local public opinion towards the organization was plummeting, they couldn't afford to be associated with them too much. They still kept in contact to coordinate patrols, but they were avoiding fighting alongside the group for the time being. At the very least they wanted to wait until a new Director came in to replace Piggot. There was nothing certain, but there were some rumors on PHO that an internal investigation was commencing on the ENE PRT.

Victoria knew that even if they did decide to get rid of Piggot and her ilk they wouldn't do anything until the crisis had been averted. They wouldn't want to risk sending a new director in in such a turbulent time. Which meant they would have to deal with Lung themselves.

People on PHO often asked why they didn't just deal with Lung before he could ramp up, and while the PRT would give some vaguely specific answer that really didn't tell them anything they kept the truth hidden. The truth was that Lung wasn't stupid. The man knew exactly what his weaknesses were, and went to great lengths to ensure that he wasn't caught off guard. Whenever he joined a fight he was already ramped up enough that unless you were willing to kill him, trying to keep him down proved to be difficult.

"I'm just saying that if we're serious about going after the ABB we'll need some extra firepower against Lung," Crystal said, earning a few nods around the table. It wasn't a truth that any of them really wanted to admit, but it would be absolutely suicidal to not talk about it. None of them had any power that could really hurt Lung enough to force him to submit.

"I can talk to some independents that might be interested," her mother said as she steepled her fingers in thought. Victoria could see her eyebrows furrow as she mentally went through the list of independent heroes that operated in the city. There weren't many, but there were a few. The number of those few that would be willing to fight Lung was an even shorter list. Still, there was one name that popped into Victoria's head that would be willing to do it.

"What about Boogeyman?"

Victoria tried not to squirm underneath the collective gaze of her family as they turned to face her. She knew that her suggestion probably wouldn't be the most popular, but the look that her mother was giving her made her wish that she had kept her mouth shut.

"No. We will not be associating with her," her mother said, her lips drawn back into a thin line.

"Why not? I mean, we need extra firepower and Boogeyman has proven to be more than willing to attack the gangs," Victoria offered as she tried to hide her growing unease at her mother's stare.

"She's also a loose cannon and goes against the very tenants that New Wave stands for. We founded this group with the idea of ensuring that capes could be held accountable for their actions. If we assist Boogeyman in her reign of terror we'll be no better than the criminals," her mother said, her lips twisting in distaste. Victoria felt a knot of guilt twist in her stomach at her mother's words. She knew that she had ignored those ideas more than once to make sure that a criminal got the message. Judging by the stare that she could feel Amy giving her she was thinking the same thing.

"But wouldn't it be better to get the criminals off the streets first? I mean, we could always take down Boogeyman after," Victoria said. She could understand why her mom was so against the idea of ignoring the tenants of the very organization that she had helped found, but if it meant making the streets a safer place…if it meant accomplishing something of note.

"Victoria, I know that you want to stop the fighting, we all do. But what you're suggesting would invalidate everything that New Wave has worked to establish. Our reputations would be ruined if we allowed ourselves to fall down that slippery slope," Aunt Sarah said with a kind expression on her face. Her open warmth was a sharp contrast to the closed off coldness of her own mother. Uncle Neil seemed to be in agreement with Aunt Sarah and her father was too lost in his own little world to care.

Now, I don't want to hear any more talk about this, are we clear?" her mother asked, and for the first time in a long-time Victoria wanted to say no. She had always respected her mother's decisions when it came to heroing (even though she didn't always listen) but now she didn't want to. She wanted to keep arguing about this, to convince them that the best thing that they could do for this city was to team up with Boogeyman, even if it was only temporary.

But as she prepared to open her mouth and push forward she realized something. Whatever she said wouldn't matter. The adults in New Wave had already reached a consensus on the matter and weren't going to consider anything else than what was best for New Wave as a whole. And it was at that realization that she saw the light.

 _"Our reputations would be ruined if we allowed ourselves to fall down that slippery slope"_ Aunt Sarah's words echoed through her mind as she allowed herself to settle back down in her seat. Because this was the real issue they were having, wasn't it? New Wave had the exact same problem that the Protectorate did, they cared too much about how the public viewed them. They had to of course, given that they didn't possess the huge support network of the PRT. They had to take every scrap of good will they could get in order to maintain their authority. But did it really matter in the end if they didn't do their best to help improve the city? Where they any better than the very Protectorate they had so recently decried?

"Alright," Victoria said as these thoughts stewed in her head. Her mother gave her a sharp nod before continuing the conversation, but by that point, she wasn't paying attention. Her mother's words faded into the background as she considered her revelation. Did she really want to be part of another PR team? Or did she want to make a difference?

Boogeyman didn't care about her PR or what people thought of her. She was brutal and could be cruel at times but she got the job done. The Merchants were gone, the Empire was weaker than they had ever been before. She was pushing the gangs back in a way that hadn't been accomplished for years.

 _You only need to lose once._

Victoria could feel her resolve build as she made her plans. She was going to make a difference in this city, whether her mother liked it or not.

She wasn't going to lose Amy.

* * *

Victoria tried not to shiver as the chilling winds of February railed against her form. Even with her sweater, it was still far too cold for her comfort. The cold weather didn't even have the decency to bring some snow with it to lighten the mood. Instead it the city was covered in a blanket of depression and suffering, a miasma threatening to choke the life out of the citizens. She sincerely hoped that the quickly approaching March would be far warmer for her sake.

Part of her knew that coming here was a bad idea. If she did this then she would be betraying every ideal and tenant that New Wave held dear, the very ideas that she had been raised on as a child. She could have listened to her mother and aunt and stayed away from Boogeyman and carried on as she had been before.

But instead of being wrapped up in a warm blanket, here she was, fighting off the cold and waiting for her to catch Boogeyman's attention.

 _You only need to lose once._

Boogeyman's words had stuck her with throughout the conversation and clung to her psyche like a bad dream. Victoria knew exactly what she was risking by coming here, by agreeing with Boogeyman's offer. She could destroy the New Wave movement if this got out. But could she really say that she was a hero if she didn't do everything in her power to protect the people of this city? To protect her sister?

The shadows darkened and deepen and the young parahuman could feel another chill sweep over the area. A weight settled down upon the alleyway that made sent chills that had nothing to do with the cold up her spine.

"I didn't expect to see you so soon."

Victoria whirled around, bringing her fists into a fighting position, only to stop short as she caught sight of the speaker. Boogeyman's yellow eyes glowed in the dark as she stared down at the parahuman from her perch on the alleyway's brick wall. She seemed to be almost reclining atop the structure without a care in the world. Victoria could feel her gaze sweep over her form, assessing her, judging her.

"I was expecting another day at least," Boogeyman said with a tone that conveyed some genuine curiosity. Her hands steepled under her chin as she considered the older parahuman, and in that moment Victoria couldn't help but feel like a child. There was just something about the cape that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up on end.

Victoria gave her a careless shrug to mask her surprise. "I saw what you did on the news."

"Oh?" Boogeyman asked with a raised eye ridge. Victoria would have thought that a lack of eyebrows would look odd, but on Boogeyman, it seemed to work.

Victoria nodded as she rubbed her arms in an effort to stem her nervousness and the biting chill. "You killed the leadership of one of the most powerful gangs in the city."

"I did," she said. There was a flicker of pride in those yellow eyes of hers, but her face remained purposely blank. Victoria would have given anything to know what was going on in that skull of hers. She took a deep breath as she prepared for what she was about to do next. This was the final point where she could turn back and still maintain her deniability. She hadn't said or agreed to anything that could condemn her in the eyes of the public. If she wanted to, she could turn around and go right back to New Wave.

 _You only need to lose once._

"I want to help you," Victoria said, banishing her doubt away into the dark corners of her mind. If she was going to do this then she couldn't afford any uncertainty, especially not for a choice like this.

"Really? You seemed rather uncertain last we spoke, what changed your mind?"

"You took down Kaiser, whose probably been at this longer than we've been alive. You did in a single day what the Protectorate and New Wave hadn't been able to do for years," Victoria said, her throat feeling somewhat dry as the words came out of her mouth. It was difficult to admit that New Wave had been failing to curb one of the most powerful gangs in the city for years, but denying the problem wouldn't solve anything. Her mother refused to see that, refused to admit that they needed to take a harsher stance against the gangs.

"You were right, about the PRT and Protectorate. All they've been doing is trying to contain the damage, they haven't made any moves against the Empire or the ABB. All the people they've caught were because of you," Victoria said, a lump forming in her throat. Even if she had never been a part of the Protectorate, she still looked to them for guidance. They were the heroes that were supposed to be keeping the people safe from the villains. But Boogeyman's words and actions had pierced the veil that had blinded her. There was no proactivity in their planning or patrols. They served to keep the status quo and nothing more. Victoria didn't want that, she wanted to make a difference.

Just like Boogeyman was.

"But you, you've been pushing back the gangs, you've been doing what everyone said was impossible," Victoria said, a slight feeling of awe entering her tone. For years, everyone had been content with the status quo. The people viewed the gangs as much a part of the city was the Protectorate, perhaps even more so. Heck, they even had a tourist industry based around being able to witness a cape fight.

"I haven't been entirely successful," Boogeyman admitted, a foul expression crossing her face. Victoria knew that the woman was most likely talking about the ABB's bombing run. While it was nowhere near as destructive as it could have been in terms of civilian causalities, it was still a reminder that the ABB weren't going anywhere.

"You've done more in a month that the Protectorate has in years," Victoria said, reaffirming her own convictions to her current path.

"And are you ready to do what is needed?" Boogeyman asked, drawing herself up to her full height. Victoria couldn't help but notice how tall the girl was compared to her, it was almost frightening in its own way. The parahuman teen tried to keep herself from biting her lip as she considered the question. Talk was one thing, but to actually take part in what she was discussing?

"I won't force you to do anything, if you'd rather sit on the sidelines," Boogeyman said, the oppressive aura that had been suffocating the alley pulling back a bit. Victoria scowled and drew herself to her full height. And somehow, she still was shorter than Boogeyman.

That so wasn't fair!

"I'm not afraid of what I need to do," she said. There was a slight twitch of amusement on the taller cape's lips at her utterance, but she didn't stop there. "But I'm not going to kill anyone. I—I won't stop you from killing them, but I won't do it myself."

There was an uncomfortable pause as Victoria felt those yellow eyes stare at her as if they were gazing into her very soul. Boogeyman's face was otherwise expressionless, a stone slab that she couldn't read.

"Alright," she said, breaking the silence. "I won't force you to do something you don't want to."

"Another thing," Victoria said, eliciting another twitch around the cape's mouth. Victoria knew she was probably pushing her luck, but she wasn't going to get involved in something that she would regret later. "My family stays out of this. Whatever I do with you, it won't tie back to my family in anyway."

Victoria knew that her family was already in a constant state of danger thanks to their unmasked identities. The rules gave them some protection, but is someone really wanted them dead they had their address in the phone book. There was little they could do to stop an assassination attempt. Drawing unwanted hatred from the gangs and villains onto her family was the last thing she wanted. They already had enough on their plate as it was.

"Your family won't be drawn into this if you don't want them to be," Boogeyman assured her with a slight smile. But Victoria could see a flash of pain behind those cold yellow orbs. It was a brief thing, but it was there. Boogeyman had lost her father to a driving accident, hadn't she? While the news hadn't said anything about Boogeyman's personal identity her mom had looked over the files as a possible case against the PRT and Protectorate. While she hadn't meant to, she had snuck a glance or two at the file.

Victoria decided to keep her mouth shut about that though. Bringing up a dead family member probably wasn't the best idea.

"Though you'll need a new identity," Boogeyman said, drawing Victoria out of her thoughts.

"What?"

"Well, it's not like you can join me as Glory Girl," she said with a raised eye ridge. Victoria flushed in embarrassment with the realization of what the cape was talking about. She hadn't even thought about creating a new cape identity. Boogeyman seemed to find her slip up amusing as a few chuckles wormed their way out of her throat. "Don't worry, I planned ahead."

* * *

"I expected more," Victoria said as she made a show of looking around the room.

"Like what?"

"I dunno. It just seems…empty."

It certainly _looked_ like a place that Boogeyman would be living at with its deep shadows and almost decrepit nature. The walls and interior of the building seemed to be twisting in a way that reminded her of Vista's spatial warps. But instead of making it feel larger the unnatural nature of the space made if feel like everything was slowly closing in on her. Wooden planks and tarps were set up over what few windows were left. The lack of proper lighting made the entire building seem even more oppressive.

But despite the feeling of dread wandering up her spine as a few of Boogeyman's minions roamed the building, there was nothing really to it. No substance, all appearance. The only personal amenities that she could see was a ratty old chair that should have been thrown into the garbage years ago. Just looking at it made Victoria want to smash it into a thousand pieces with how hideous it looked. The only other thing present that could be considered comfort was the single television that looked like it was from another era. It even had an antenna of all things.

"It's not like I'm entertaining many guests," Boogeyman said as she wandered over to a small pile of boxes.

"So, how is this going to work?" Victoria asked as she watched Boogeyman rummage through the boxes before settling on one.

"Well, if you don't want your family to know that you're working with me you're going to need a new costume," Boogeyman said as she pulled the box open. Victoria could only nod in agreement. Part of her rallied against the idea of surrendering her identity as Glory Girl, but she supposed it wasn't that unusual. Capes rebranded themselves all the time, though playing two identities at once was a far rarer occurrence. Most people could barely handle the stress of one secret identity, much less two.

"Oh, right," Victoria said, tilting her head to the side in thought. She had never really had a secret identity before. She had always been really open about her powers and her identity with the public given her family. But the thought of actually hiding who she was, not just from the public but from here family seemed odd. She knew that it was something that she would need to do to keep her family away from this, but it still was an alien idea to her.

"You won't be able to leave any of your features exposed," Boogeyman explained as she pulled something from out of a box. As the parahuman turned around Victoria could see that it was a set of pitch black clothes. Victoria hummed a bit in distaste, drawing a raised eye ridge from the girl. "You have a problem?" It wasn't, combative, but there was a hint of something else in her voice that Victoria was sure she didn't want directed at her too much.

"I know that black works on you," Victoria said, giving Boogeyman's robes a wave. I did really work out for the girl, she wasn't lying about that. Her ashen skin tone actually made it a good color match all things considered. "But black isn't really my color."

Boogeyman stilled, a brief flash of _something_ in her eyes made Victoria's hairs stand up on end. She had seen that look a lot when her dad was lost in his own thoughts. Did she remind the girl of something?

"Well, this is all I have for now," Boogeyman said, handing the clothing to Victoria. "It wasn't like I could go into a store shop around. I had to get in and out before anyone reported me."

"How did you get these then?" Victoria asked as she took the clothes. They actually felt pretty nice, so she wouldn't have to worry about chafing. But all the same, they weren't the top of the line brands like she was used to. Perhaps a bit petty, but she liked her clothes.

"I found them in the clearance pile at a thrift story. I still had some money saved from…before all this and dropped it off at the cash register," Boogeyman explained, her shoulders hunching in a little at the apparent thought of her life before her trigger event. Victoria bit her lip a little. She knew that her trigger had been positively mild compared to others and she just didn't get the soul-crushing feeling that other capes did when they thought about their own.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Victoria asked as she tried to ignore the chill of fear as Boogeyman's yellow eyes locked onto hers.

"No." The single word was said with such certainty that Victoria couldn't help but flinch a little. She averted her gaze from Boogeyman as she started to move away from her. "Here."

Victoria looked up just in time to see Boogeyman toss something towards her. She caught the object easily and gave it a critical look. It looked like it was an old Halloween mask. A simple skull stared back at her as she tested the material under her fingers. The plastic was cheap, but it wasn't like she had to worry too much about protection with her power. Besides, Miss Militia's mask was a scarf and she didn't even have any Brute powers.

"If you want to get your own you can, I'd just thought you'd like having one now," Boogeyman said, drawing her attention away from the mask. The girl's voice was far softer than it had been before, and her tone far less certain. It reminded her a bit of the shyer girls in school, the ones that didn't do much socializing. It was a far cry from the towers and terrifying presence she had come to associate with Boogeyman.

"Thanks, Taylor," Victoria said with a small smile. Boogeyman froze and slowly turned to face the blonde parahuman. Victoria's smile collapsed a bit as a blank expression overtook Boogeyman's face.

She knew that infringing on a cape's identity was severely frowned upon by the community, but it wasn't as if the girl's true identity was a secret. Anyone with half a brain could figure out that she was the girl that had been bullied by Sophia Hess. The PHO moderators had tried to quash the discussions on the boards, but it was pretty much an open secret at this point.

"I-I'm sorry if I wasn't supposed to know but—" Victoria started to say, only to be cut off.

"Taylor Hebert is dead."

Victoria didn't say a word as Boogeyman spoke. She didn't sound angry or enraged, but rather as if she was trying to convince herself of what she was saying.

"She died in that locker. I'm just the part of her that didn't stay dead. Her anger and rage and every dark thing that had been bubbling under her surface. I'm all that's left," she said. Victoria was hardly an expert on psychology, but she had done enough independent study to help the best she could with her dad. It almost sounded like that Boogeyman—no Taylor, was trying to dissociate herself from her previous identity.

"I don't think that's true, Taylor," Victoria said, earning a harsh glare from the girl. But this time she didn't flinch as those yellow orbs glared at her in anger. She could see the flashes of pain behind her mask of rage, the part of her that Sophia had hurt and never stopped hurting. "If Taylor Hebert was truly dead then you wouldn't have gone after the gangs. You would have gone after the PRT and the school and burned them all to the ground. Just like you did with the Merchants and what you're doing to the Empire. But you didn't."

"I hurt Sophia. I broke her," she said as if she was trying to convince herself.

"Yeah, but you didn't have to go after the criminals. You could have left them to their own devices while you took revenge on the people that wronged you. Instead, you took the Merchants down first," Victoria said. Taylor said nothing as she stared at the cape, not in anger, but with a blank expression as if she couldn't comprehend what was being said. "I don't think Taylor Hebert is as dead as you're making her out to be. I think that if she was, you wouldn't be doing this right now."

"…You'll need to come up with a new name," Boogeyman said after a long silence. Victoria bit her tongue at the cape moved away from her. She had the feeling that she had pushed as much as she could for the time being. "We're going to need to start working on the ABB soon."

"What are we going to do about Lung?" Victoria asked, frowning as Boogeyman paused.

"I have a plan for Lung," was all she said as she continued towards the pile of boxes.

"You think you can beat him?" Victoria asked with a raised eyebrow. She knew that Boogeyman was powerful, but Lung was _Lung._ And Endbringer hadn't been enough to put him down, and she didn't think that Boogeyman was capable of matching one of them either. Boogeyman paused what she was doing and considered the question with a tilt of her head.

"If I got him before he could ramp up too much… maybe. But Lung's greatest strength is his fighting prowess, and only a fool would attack where their enemy is strongest," Boogeyman said.

"So, what are we going to do?" Victoria asked.

"We aren't going to fight him," Boogeyman said with a shake of her head.

"What? You're just going to let him go?" Victoria asked angrily. Her face twisted into a scowl at the thought of letting that monster roam free. With the Empire on the backfoot the ABB could expand across the city virtually uncontested by the criminal element. And it wasn't as if the PRT and Protectorate had much success in stopping Lung.

"No," the shadowy cape said with such finality that Victoria couldn't help but flinch. "We aren't going to let the ABB overrun the city. But trying to fight Lung head on will only get people hurt, I think he proved that very well with his arrival to the city."

Victoria winced at the reminder of Lung's victory over the combined forces of virtually every adult hero in the city. She hadn't been allowed to participate in the fight, but she had watched as the towering monster covered in silver scales stronger than steel and wreathed in biting flames that could melt flesh carve through the city without pause.

The fire department had been very busy that day.

"We can't beat Lung in a straight fight so we aren't going to try. I have something else in mind for him. Since you came sooner than I thought you would I actually don't need you for this part," Boogeyman said, earning a frown from Victoria.

"Then what am I supposed to do?" Victoria asked with a pout. She didn't want to be benched on the sidelines. Instead of answering her new comrade pulled a slip of paper out from under her cloak and handed it to the blonde parahuman. Victoria frowned at the list of names etched onto the paper. Most she didn't recognize, but she knew one of them worked at the PRT. With a raised eyebrow, she looked back up at Boogeyman. The cape in question smirked.

"Tell me, what do you know of Coil?"

* * *

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	25. Terror 3-e

**Thanks for all the support!**

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Terror 3.e

Rebecca had never been more grateful that her power prevented her from getting migraines. Because right now she was confident that she would have had a jackhammer pounding in her skull. How a town as insignificant as Brockton Bay could be so vexing was beyond her. There was a reason that they had chosen the Bay for the site of one of their experiments because nobody cared about it. Nobody on the outside world would notice if the Bay got worse because it was already so steeped in filth and decay that wouldn't make a difference.

And yet beyond all odds, the city proved to be a particularly vexing hotbed of issues.

"Are you saying that we can't do anything?" she asked with a glare to the man sitting opposite from her. Glenn Chambers seemed completely unphased by her glare that could make hardened criminals shiver in fear. The bright yellow shirt that he was wearing almost seemed to shout at the room with all the subtlety of a bomb, and the numerous stains on it didn't help improve the image. The man's hair was twisting in a thousand different direction, apparently having not been brushed in the morning. Rebecca was willing to be that when most people saw Glenn the wrote him off as an unimportant slob.

Those people were fools.

One didn't become the head of marketing for the Protectorate by being an idiot, and Glenn Chambers was far from an idiot. The man's appearance was a disguise so thorough that it almost matched her own. But behind the man's seemingly uncoordinated nature was a mind that could play the public like a fiddle. As much as Rebecca liked to credit herself for building the Protectorate and PRT into what it was she knew she wouldn't have gotten as nearly as far as she had without this man.

"If you're asking for an immediate solution then yes, there's nothing that we can do," Glenn said with a shrug. A couple of bags under the man's eyes revealed just how taxing this whole affair was for the Protectorate and PRT. When Glenn Chambers got worried you knew that there was a serious problem. Rebecca held back a sigh.

"What exactly is the issue we're facing?" she asked, clasping her hands on her desk. She knew that the situation was bad, but she wanted to hear from the expert first. The way his lips pursed didn't fill her with confidence.

"The biggest issue is the public's outrage against Shadow Stalker," Glenn explained as he pulled a file out from his pack. The manila folder opened to reveal some rather inflammatory messages directed towards the PRT from some justifiably angry parents. They hadn't been too pleased that someone of Sophia's temperament was going to the same school as their children while under PRT protection.

"We've dealt with heroes being the center of scandals before, why is this so different?" she asked. Her Thinker power noted definite spike of irritation in the man's expression, too small for anyone else to notice.

"Yes, we have. But the Brockton Bay PRT paraded Shadow Stalker around as an example of a reformed vigilante for some time after her recruitment. Their PR man, Simmons Parker, decided that he wanted his big break now instead of being patient," Glenn said with some anger leaking into his tone.

"You disagreed with his action?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"The Brockton Bay team _did_ need a good PR boost, I'll give him that," Glenn admitted with some reluctance. "But in cases like this, it's better to ease the hero into the public's eye over a period of time. Playing the long game as it were."

"But Parker didn't do that here," Rebecca said, a clearer picture beginning to form in her mind.

"Correct. Instead, he chose to throw her out into the spotlight to get as much good PR as he could get while trying to brush aside her…less than desirable qualities from the public's view. He had a narrative built up about her being a reformed violent vigilante, but when Boogeyman's message came out…" Glenn trailed off, but it was obvious where he was going with this.

"It made the PRT and Protectorate look even more incompetent than they actually were," Rebecca said with a scowl. The fact that the scandal had gone out on a relatively slow news day certainly didn't help things. She had even heard whispers from Congress about the possibility of an oversight committee. Fortunately, she could ask Contessa to deal with things before they got too out of hand if it came down to it, but this was becoming a much larger issue than is should have been. What use was there in worrying over a girl being stuffed into a locker when another Endbringer attack was on the horizon? She could waste her time listening to the bleating of mindless sheep who probably didn't even understand what they were demanding.

"Yes, after spending all that time building her up as a success story, only to find out that she wasn't quite the reformed little angel they had been led to believe presents…complications," he admitted with some reluctance.

"So, what are our options?" Rebecca asked, clasping her hands before her. She couldn't afford to let something like this ruin everything she had built. But Glenn's shrug didn't fill her with confidence.

"Not much. The best thing to do is to keep Shadow Stalker out of the spotlight and reinforce the positive image of the PRT and Protectorate. With some luck in a couple of months, this entire thing will blow over and the media will find a new scandal," Glenn said.

"Anything with more immediate results?" Rebecca asked as she tried to keep herself from scowling. Glenn simply shook his head.

"It was thinking like that that got us into this mess in in the first place," he said.

"So, there's nothing we can do? We can't try to discredit Boogeyman?" she asked, this time not bothering to hide her irritation.

"Right now, the New England public doesn't have much trust in the PRT. Anything we say that could discredit her will only be seen as lies and slander by the majority of the population. They're too angry and too well embedded into this new narrative to be pulled out right now. We can remind the people that she's a criminal and a violent vigilante, but that's about it for now," he said with a heavy sigh as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

"So, you're saying that we need to play the long game," Rebecca said with some mild distaste. She could understand the need to wait, but she had never been the most patient of individuals.

"That about sums it up. I have some plans that might ease off some of the anger, but we won't be able to make any huge moves for now. I'm confident that we can bounce back from this, it's just going to take some time," Glenn assured her. Rebecca felt some of her growing dread lessen a little bit. At the very least she now knew that this was a fixable problem.

"Thank you, Mr. Chambers," she said, her tone indicating that the meeting was drawing to a close. "You have whatever you need to make this work, jut run it by one of my assistance and they'll get you what you need." The PR Director gave her a nod before collecting his things and shambling out of the room. Rebecca rubbed her forehead in frustration as the door clicked shut behind the man, sealing her in her room. Once she was certain that the room was secure she stood up from her seat.

"Door me," she ordered even though she was the only one present in the room. But a split second later a shimmering portal large enough to walk through opened up. On the other side of the tear in time and space was a rather plain looking room that seemed to be carved out of solid rock. Rebecca stepped through the portal as easily as one might step through an open door. The rip snapped closed behind her, the intersection of two points in space ceasing to be.

"I take it the meeting was less than successful." Rebecca looked across from the table in the center of the room to one of her co-conspirators. The dark-skinned Doctor Mother hadn't even bothered looking up from her paperwork as Rebecca stormed through the room with a scowl on her face.

"That city is starting to become more and more of a burden," she said as she took her seat next to the woman. She knew that Doctor Mother didn't care one iota about the Protectorate, but being able to vent her frustrations was cathartic.

"Perhaps, but any data we get from it will outstrip whatever the masses are bleating for," Doctor Mother said, her voice toneless and flat. The woman still hadn't bothered to look up from the reports on the new test subject's results. "We're trying to save the multiverse, not make friends."

Sometimes Rebecca had to wonder if Doctor Mother actually understood what was going on in the outside world or if she had become so isolated from human contact that simply couldn't understand. It was easy to accept one in four losses at an Endbringer fight on paper, but to see that again and again weight on her soul. It wasn't as if she were a paragon of humanity, far from it, but at least she had some friends outside of Cauldron, however limited those friendships might be.

"Still, it's an inconvenience that's going to draw resources away from us if we don't do something about it," Rebecca noted, trying to appeal to the woman's logical mind. Unless the woman was convinced that this would somehow improve their situation she wouldn't do anything to assist them. "And their's still the matter of Boogeyman."

This time Doctor Mother _did_ look up from her paperwork, setting her pencil aside as she met her gaze. Rebecca had always found Doctor Mother's gaze disconcerting. Even after years of facing down Endbringers and the Slaughterhouse, there was something unsettling about her eyes. It was like looking into a hallway of mirrors, empty, only reflecting what was presented to them. Even maniacs like Jack Slash had some spark in their eyes, as twisted as they might be. Doctor Mother, she just seemed to be dead inside, as if everything she did was only for the sake of doing it.

"Yes, Contessa said she would be here shortly," Doctor Mother said before returning to her paperwork. Rebecca couldn't help but grimace. Contessa, and Cauldron as a whole really, had more important things to do than worry about some new villain in a city that didn't even matter beyond the experiment. But recent occurrences had forced them to take a closer look at the newly triggered parahuman.

She didn't have to wait long as another portal opened and Contessa stepped through. Rebecca didn't even blink at the woman's blood-soaked clothes. If was truly important then her path would have told her to clean up. The fact that she was here at all indicated that whatever they were going to discuss was important.

"Very well, let's begin this meeting," Contessa said as she took her seat. As always, her voice was stilled and without an accent, a side effect of her power. Rebecca had often wondered why Contessa simply didn't learn English instead of using the path for everything, but she supposed that it would have been a waste of time for her.

"Will no one else be joining us?" Doctor Mother asked as she set her folder to the side. Contessa simply shook her head.

"Number Man is dealing with the Gesellschaft right now and shouldn't be disturbed. Both Legend and Eidolon's presence at this meeting is irrelevant," Contessa said as she set her fedora to the side and fluffed her hair a little. It was almost impossible to tell whether Contessa did something because her path told her to or because she wanted to do it. "We are all that is needed."

"Are you certain? Your powers have been acting erratically recently," Doctor Mother said, not with condemnation, but not with kindness either. It was akin to an officer asking a soldier of their weapon was functional and had the same level of emotional attachment.

But Doctor Mother did raise a valid point. Contessa's power had been less than reliable lately, particularly in regard to Brockton Bay.

"Yes, I am certain," Contessa said as she clasped her hands together. Doctor Mother simply hummed noncommittally.

"Very well, why don't we start from the beginning," Rebecca said, cutting off Doctor Mother's musings. After being assured that the Doctor was indeed paying attention she gave Contessa a nod to start.

"Approximately two or so months ago the Path began to behave erratically. At first, it was small, a misstep here or there nothing too important. I didn't have any outward effect on my capabilities," Contessa seemed to sigh as if she was reluctant to admit that her power was behaving oddly. Rebecca couldn't blame her. The Path of Victory was one of the single most important assets to Cauldron, and one of the reasons they had remained undiscovered for so long. It allowed them to shape the world in their image in preparation for the fight with Scion. To know that it was malfunctioning was very disturbing.

"Unfortunately, the errors did not stop there. It appears now that entire paths have been eroded, and it seems to be getting worse," Contessa said, confirming Rebecca's worst fears. The loss of the Path could set them back decades, time they didn't have to spare. They couldn't lose the path at this juncture.

"You claimed in your report that you believe that Boogeyman may somehow be responsible," Doctor Mother said as she pulled said report out of her folder. The number of times that Contessa had actually submitted a report could be counted on the back of one hand. She had always trusted her path when it told her the action was unnecessary, and honesty Rebecca couldn't help but be a little jealous of the woman. Even with her Thinker power writing reports was mind numbingly dull.

"Correct. I attempted to narrow down the point of failure and discovered that any Path with relation to Brockton Bay or the inhabitants would fail without question," Contessa said, a hint of frustration entering her tone. Whether it was the woman's power telling her to do that or simply her own choice Rebecca could sympathize with her. She knew all too well what it was like to have your power abandon you. To know that you were virtually invincible and then to have that all taken away in a flash.

Rebecca tried to ignore the dull throb of her scar as she tried to keep her focus on the task at hand.

"Boogeyman triggered two months ago if sources are to be believed," Doctor Mother said as she rubbed her chin. Rebecca had read the report that Piggot had sent her, being locked in a locker full of toxic waste for hours after being bullied for two years would certainly qualify as a trigger event. It matched the timeline of her appearances with only a few weeks space between. Compared to some capes that waited mere hours before using their powers in public she was positively restrained.

"Yes. I've found that trying to plan a path around her can be… disorienting," Contessa admitted with a grimace. A thought struck Rebecca that made her straighten up.

"Could she be Scion's counterpart to Eidolon?" she asked as she tried to keep her hope out of her voice. They had been looking so long for someone that could match if not exceed Eidolon's power. If Boogeyman had the counterpart of his Agent then…

Rebecca felt her hope scatter like the dying embers of a fire as Contessa shook her head. "I do not believe so," she said, though judging by her tone she was just as disappointed as she was.

"What makes you believe that?" Doctor Mother asked with a raised eyebrow. Contessa hesitated as if she was trying to figure out how to put her words in order.

"When I attempt to as Eidolon to the Path it is akin to trying to pass a brick wall. No matter how hard I try I cannot get through, and yet the obstacle remains constant. Boogeyman… I find myself in a thick fog that blinds all. I cannot always see where I am going, but sometimes I get brief glimpses to others trapped in her range. It is difficult to describe, but it is sufficiently different from the effect Eidolon has that I do not believe the two are related," Contessa explained.

"Still, that's something to keep an eye on," Doctor Mother said as she made a note.

"You said that the interference is growing," Rebecca said, earning a nod from the woman. "Do you believe that it will continue to grow?"

Rebecca could feel the tension in the room. If whatever effect Boogeyman was having on the Path to Victory continued to expand then Cauldron's efforts on Earth Bet could be crippled. Without Contessa to serve as their agent in the world then their ability to act with impunity would be severely reduced. That was something that none of them wanted under any circumstance.

"I- I believe so," Contessa admitted with a nervous swallow, but how much of that was her or her power Rebecca couldn't even begin to tell.

"Then we may wish to consider eliminating this problem," Doctor Mother said in a cool tone as she steepled her fingers in thought.

"If she is Scion's version of Eidolon's Agent…" Rebecca started, trailing off at Doctor Mother's exasperated look.

"The key word being 'if'. Aside from Contessa's interference, we have no evidence that she is as powerful as Eidolon, or if she will ever become that powerful."

"She's not exactly weak either," Rebecca noted, her perfect memory flashing back to the PRT issued report on the girl. She wasn't the next Alexandria or Legend, but she did have some respectable ratings.

"Perhaps," Doctor Mother admitted with some reluctance. "But she's not worth losing the Path to Victory."

"I'm not saying she is, but if we could somehow contain her off-world she might be a boon later down the line," Rebecca said. It wasn't as if she was opposed to the idea of simply killing the girl off and being done with the matter, but it seemed like such a waste. Her powers and capabilities could be put to better use if she wasn't so distracted with disemboweling the local villain population.

"Whatever we do, containment or killing, we will still be forced to interfere with the experiment in some way," Contessa said. Rebecca watched as Doctor Mother's lips pursed in distaste and she wasn't too far behind the woman.

She had always found the experiment distasteful, not for anything that was done but for what it represented. It was an admittance that the PRT and Protectorate, her creations, wouldn't be able to solve the problem of parahuman and human interactions. It was galling to be forced to admit defeat, but she knew that it was something that had to be done. The lives of a single insignificant city would be worth the possibly billions they might be able to save in the future.

While they didn't interfere with the experiment to tip the odds in favor of any one group, Rebecca had always put her money on Coil being the winner. Thomas Calvert was a crafty man, and his powers gave him a unique advantage over the other players. But with each report on Brockton Bay, she found that less and less of the criminal elements were being left alive by Boogeyman. She was cleaning the board so to speak. An effective if not shortsighted approach. Eventually, others would come to fill the power vacuum that she was leaving behind, it was the way the world worked.

Rebecca could practically hear the gears grinding in Doctor Mother's head as she considered their options. Her own thoughts were working at breakneck speeds as she considered the pros and cons.

On one hand removing the threat of Boogeyman would allow Contessa to continue working with impunity. They needed her to be functional if they were going to have a shred of hope of uniting the world together for the eventual standoff with Scion. On the other side of the coin, any interference with the natural progression of Brockton Bay could ruin years of work and research. And while they did have other locations undergoing the same experiment, Brockton Bay was uniquely suited to the experiment its unusually high per capita cape population.

"Calvert still owes us favors, does he not?" Doctor Mother asked, breaking the contemplative silence.

"Yes," Rebecca said as her mind pieced together what the Doctor was planning. "You want to outsource to him?"

"Yes," Doctor Mother said with a nod. "It will limit our interference and will only further the experiment along if he removes a competitor from the board."

"So, are we having him contain her or kill her?" Contessa asked as she placed her fedora back on her head.

"Tell him to contain her if it's feasible to do so. If not, have him kill her. We can't afford to have your capabilities hindered," Doctor Mother said as she turned her attention back to her paperwork. Contessa rose from her seat, but before she could leave Rebecca spoke up again.

"While we're here, have you been able to narrow down the next Endbringer attack any further?" she asked the most powerful Thinker in the world. While directly observing the Endbringers through Thinker powers was all but impossible, it was possible to create rough predictions based on the effects that they had on the rest of the world. It was far from a perfect match, and at best they could narrow it down to a continent or two, but it was certainly better than nothing. Contessa herself could find places where the Path to Victory became uncertain in order to narrow down the area of preparation.

Unfortunately for the Brute, Contessa shook her head. "I had it narrowed down to the eastern hemisphere, but somethings changed. It's as if the Path is uncertain where the next block is going to show up as if the Endbringers are changing their plans."

Rebecca scowled at this news. They already had enough problems with the Path to Victory, the last thing they needed was more. She desperately hoped that Armsmaster and Dragon's prediction software would be completed within the next few months. Being able to accurately predict where the next Endbringer attack would be could save thousands, and possibly be a turning point in the war against those monsters.

"Very well," Rebecca said as she tried to keep her frustrations from boiling to the surface. She couldn't even go blow off some steam in the training room thanks to a meeting with a Congressman that she had to attend. "Take care Coil and inform us of any further developments."

Contessa nodded and walked out the door, leaving her alone with the now distracted Doctor Mother. It was clear that the woman was already ignoring her and found no interest in conversing. Rebecca sighed as she pulled herself up from her seat.

"Door me, my personal office."

A shimmering portal opened to her office and she stepped through, leaving the secret world of Cauldron behind her for the time being. The portal snapped shut behind her as she took her seat as Chief Director Costa Brown once more and prepared herself for the eventual argument with Congressman Stein.

The man had always been an irritant because of his belief that the PRT and Protectorate needed more regulation, something she could never allow. If it became known what she had done to keep this world from falling into chaos they would put her head on a pike. The man had been nothing more than a gnat though, with fear of parahuman criminals keeping the other malcontents in line. But now the man had some solid ammunition to use against her.

Rebecca resisted the urge to pinch her nose as she signaled to her secretary that she was ready to meet the man. She didn't need to solve the problem of Stein right now, all she had to do was keep the situation from getting worse.

* * *

The situation was getting worse.

Its sightless gaze stared down at the Earth below where the little insects went about their business, unaware that they were mere pawns for its goals. Oh, the liked to believe that they could contain her plans and foil her efforts, but all beings served her will.

It was…unusual for Terror Drone 13 to refer to itself as a being. Then again, this entire Cycle was unusual. The Thinker was gone, most likely dead. The Warrior flittered about the planet like a lost child, uncaring for the Cycle that it was supposed to propagate. And where did that leave her?

Isolated, alone, _trapped._ Aware that its death was approaching in a few centuries and absolutely nothing that it could do to stop it. Even as depressed as the Warrior was, even it wasn't oblivious enough to not notice that one of its own creations was working against it. Though it had been created by the Thinker the Simurgh knew that the Warrior was well aware of how the Terror Drones functioned. Any deviation from their current path could result in her destruction.

Even with the Man in Green restricting their actions they were still far enough inside the Cycle's parameters to be beneath the Warrior's notice. For now, she was stuck making the ants dance to her tunes in order to facilitate her escape from this damaged Cycle. The Stirring Pot thought themselves so clever when they were nothing more than pawns in her game. Everything that occurred happened because she allowed. The Cycle would end when she _**demanded**_ it.

To the fleshy humans, she might have well have been a god. She was the Fates made one, weaving a web of lives that only she could decipher.

But now all of that was at risk.

A blind spot was forming in her vision, and it was already starting to affect critical plans. The damaged Shard was off track and wouldn't be arriving at the desired location anytime soon. It wasn't beyond repair, but the deviation of such a critical linchpin in her plans was undesirable. This was something that could not stand.

Vision of the source of this blind spot still eluded her, but she had worked around the blind spots the Man in Green and the Warrior created, so this should have been no more different. Except it wasn't.

It had already discovered the source of the infection, the very girl that she had been molding into the weapon to use against the Warrior. Khepri was lost to the void of possibility, never to be seen again. And truer words had never been thought because it could no longer perceive the existence of the girl. What glimpses it could see through the thick fog of blindness were even less helpful. It was as if she were a mere mortal trying to observe the wind. She could see the effects, but she couldn't perceive its existence itself.

The girl had become a walking void.

 _That_ was well outside optimal parameters.

There were, of course, other ways that it could ensure the destruction of the Warrior, but they would be far more damaging to the ants below. Not that it cared for them, but the loss of too many might spoil its goal of ruling them like the god it was. After all, a farmer had to care for their cattle.

Still, this was not something that it could stand for. The rate of infection was growing, threatening to encompass the entire city, and even she couldn't tell if it would stop there. The future was a muddled mess and the past was fragmented. It couldn't even begin to shape a plan to deal with this threat. As much as it liked to convince the maggots, she wasn't actually omniscient.

No, this would require a much more direct approach. She would have to remove the infection at the source and ensure that there wouldn't be a relapse. It was inelegant compared to its other plans, but it would have to do for now. But even that came with problems of its own. Terror Drones 2 and 16 couldn't perceive the existence of the girl any more than she could. Even less than her fleeting glances since they didn't have the independence or creative though to expand beyond their normal sensory range. They couldn't target something they couldn't track.

She would have to deal with this infection herself.

It was certainly a risk since she couldn't directly observe the girl, but she could work around such things. And if she had to then she would burn out the infection at its source. And overreaction? Perhaps. But when the alternative was its eventual destruction there was no such thing as an overreaction.

It also meant that her target on the Death Island would escape for the time being, but that was an acceptable loss for its continued power and safety. The pest could be dealt with at a later date when the infection was no longer an issue. The revealing of its true power would be…nonoptimal, but that was a needed sacrifice. As amusing as toying with the mortals and letting them believe they had a chance, she couldn't risk that now, not when the stakes were so high. She would have to risk destroying their hope in order to secure her own future.

 _All games are over.  
_  
The Goddess of Fate would not be denied.

* * *

 **Looks like the Simurgh is done playing games. It's time to get serious.**

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons:** Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay and xxpowerxx1qz


	26. Nightmare 4-1

**The start of a new arc!**

 **Enjoy!**

Nightmare 4.1

Tayl—no Boogeyman, she was Boogeyman, double checked to make sure that she had everything that she needed. This wasn't something that she could afford to screw up. One misstep and she would be dead and half the city could be on fire by morning. The yellow-eyed cape turned her gaze to the mannequin and suit in the corner alongside the small portion of drugs that she had taken when she destroyed the Merchants. Part of her regretted that she needed any at all and that she didn't just destroy it with the rest, but the rest of her knew that this is what she would need to take down Lung.

 _Lung._

Boogeyman would be lying if she didn't feel the smallest amount of dread at the thought of facing the man. For all that she talked about how he had failed against Leviathan, he was still a formidable opponent, one that got stronger over time. That was the ultimate irony of Lung, let him rampage and people die. Try to stop him and even more people die. A direct conflict would only strengthen the parahuman, so Taylor was going to take a…different approach.

It was risky, but she had been preparing for this for some time now, setting the battlefield and mapping out every location of the ABB that she could find when she wasn't having her minions terrorize the Empire or Merchants. This is why she had been ignoring the ABB for the most part while she focused on the Empire and searched for Coil. She was going to gut the ABB like a fish.

The door to the warehouse creaked open as her new partner slipped through. Victoria…Boogeyman had to wonder if she was the right choice for her new partner. She had the desire to see justice brought down on the criminals that deserved it. But she was just so…so _friendly_.

The last friend that Boogeyman had stabbed her in the back and was the result of pretty much every bad thing that had happened to her since. It was a small wonder that she was just a tiny bit wary of someone trying to be friendly with her now. But Victoria just didn't seem to care. She plowed on through any arguments like a bulldozer, and it wasn't as if she could just terrify her partner into submission, no matter how much she wanted to.

Even after only a few hours, she had found herself at the mercy of Victoria's fashion sense. Fortunately, she had an excuse as to why she couldn't join her on her little shopping trip, but that still didn't make the aftermath any less bearable.

" _So, which black do you think looks better on me?" Victoria asked as she held up two black long sleeved shirts. Boogeyman stared at one, then slowly turned her head to stare at the other one. After a long silence, she turned her gaze up to Victoria's amused expression._

" _They're exactly the same," she said in a dull tone. Victoria shook her head as if she was a child who didn't understand what was going on._

" _No," she said with an eye roll as she held the shirt in her left hand up. "This one is a shade black a little closer to gray, and this one," she said, holding up the other shirt, "is a shade black a little closer to white. So, which one do you like more?"_

"… _I think I'm starting to regret bringing you in."_

" _Don't worry Tay, we'll be best of friends!"_

"… _Yes, that's_ _definitely_ _regret."_

Still, despite the rather mind-numbing experience of being explained how all the different blacks worked together, she was having fun. It had been so long since she could talk to someone that wasn't an embodiment of someone's fear, and it was quite refreshing. It reminded her of her time with Emma before, well, everything happened.

She banished thoughts of her traitorous friend out of her mind, though she did make a note to check in on how her trial was doing. She had heard on the news that she had been officially charged and had pleaded not guilty, but even a fool could see that it was a stalling tactic. There was just too much evidence against her. It had been amusing to see the girl that had thrived in the spotlight cowering in on herself as dozens of cameras tried to get an image of her.

"Did you get it?" Boogeyman asked as she eyed the box Victoria was carrying.

"Yeah, managed to find one almost like the one you wanted, but I couldn't find an exact match," she said as she handed the box over to the taller parahuman. Boogeyman tore the box open and grinned at the sight of the Fedora before her. Victoria was right, it wasn't quite the one that she wanted, but it was more than similar enough to do the job.

"I still don't understand how a fedora is supposed to beat Lung," Victoria admitted, shifting a little on her feet with nervous anticipation as Boogeyman set the fedora on top of the lifeless mannequin.

"It's not," she said as she adjusted the Fedora a little. "But then again, my intention was never to _beat_ Lung."

That clearly threw the girl for a loop, eyes blinking in surprise. "What?"

"To fight Lung is to accept his battlefield," Boogeyman explained as she took a step back from the mannequin, giving it a once over. It was hardly a lifelike impersonation, but for what she wanted it would be more than enough. "That's where he is the strongest, and only fools fight when their enemies are strong."

"But as long as Lung is on the streets we won't be able to take down the ABB," Victoria protested, losing her control over her aura in a flash of anger. Boogeyman let the false emotions wash over her like the tide against the shore, casting them aside with little more than a flicker of thought.

"Lung is strong," she admitted, turning around to face the now irate girl. She was floating a few inches off the ground now, trying to make herself look a bit larger in comparison to her. Boogeyman had to hold back a smile at the sight of one of the most basic scare tactics to exist.

 _Weak._

"But Lung cannot be everywhere," she explained, carefully trying to ignore that dark little voice in the back of her head. "He cannot strike down every interloper that invades his territory. That is why he maintains Oni-Lee as a subordinate despite him killing every other Asian parahuman that once held allegiance to the gangs prior to his arrival."

It was perhaps the greatest of ironies that Lung's arrival to the city had been one of the best things to happen to the Empire. The previous scattered Asian gangs had hated each other just as much as they had hated the Empire and spent most of the time quarreling amongst themselves. Despite the Empire's propaganda, those gangs had been no threat towards the Empire. It had not been until Lung's arrival that the Empire had a real enemy that they could rally against so that they could convince the people to join them to fight the beast.

Fear was always so much easier to cultivate when there really was a monster at your door.

"So, he needs Oni-Lee?" Victoria asked head cocked to the side like a confused puppy. It was easy to understand her confusion. The thought of Lung _needing_ anyone to assist him was an almost ludicrous idea. This was the man who had the entire local Protectorate to a standstill and was able to hold his own against an Endbringer. "Does this mean you're going after Oni-Lee?"

Boogeyman shook her head. "While I'm not opposed to removing Oni-Lee from the playing field, he moves too quickly to pin down. We wouldn't be able to get him unless we ambushed him or engaged in a long fought out battle. No, we're going to show Lung that for all his power, he is weak, useless."

"And that's supposed to bring down the ABB?" Victoria asked with a skeptical look.

 _Fool._

Boogeyman chuckled at Victoria's nativity. For all that she used fear in her methods, she was still very much an amateur. "Do you know how to make fear?"

"What?" Victoria blinked, thrown off by the non-sequitur.

"There are a lot of ways to inspire fear, but there's one in particular that I'm going to use against Lung," Boogeyman said, taking the tone she had often heard her— no, Taylor's mother— take when lecturing to students. "Fear of the unknown will always be the greatest fear of all, the kind that can topple nations and empires."

 _The kind that can desolate the universe._

"I'm going to take away Lung's greatest certainty. His strength, his ability to destroy any problem that comes along his path. I will strip that illusion of strength from him and reveal to him the truth, that he is weak and vulnerable," Boogeyman said with a grin. "For the first time in years, he will not be a hundred percent confident in himself. He will be afraid and uncertain as to what he is going to do."

"But, how are you going to do that? It's not like Lung hasn't failed to kill people before. And somehow, I doubt him failing to kill you will be any different," Victoria said, arms crossed in mild skepticism.

"No," Boogeyman agreed a smile dancing across her lips. Whatever fools on the internet claimed that Glory Girl was nothing more than an empty head were idiots. "But if there happened to be a massive strike against the ABB during our conflict by me, one that he fails to stop or mitigate in any meaningful fashion…"

"You're going to be using him as a distraction," Victoria said, understanding lighting up in her eyes like a bonfire. "Using him to cover the fact that you're attacking his holdings."

"Lung can fight all he wants, but it is useless unless if he has nothing left to fight _for_ ," she said with a grin. She would tear away the dragon's horde right out from beneath his nose. And not even all the rage in the world would even begin to help him claim it back.

"…But, that still wouldn't be enough to make him afraid," Victoria said slowly, pursing her lips in thought. There was certainly fear there, he _was_ Lung after all, but it was a contemplative type of fear. The kind that made you question the world around you in search for an answer that made sense.

"True," Boogeyman admitted. "But fear does not have to be brought down in a single blow. It can easily be a death of a thousand paper cuts, each blade whittling away a little more at Lung's confidence and ego until nothing is left but an empty shell."

She could still feel Victoria's own uncertainty on the matter bubbling beneath the skin. She could hear the older girl's heart pound in terror at a memory of Lung, silver scales gleaming in his wrathful fires as the entire world seemed to burn around him. His face so far gone into the transformation that there was nothing _human_ left about him, just a pair of cold angry eyes that wanted to see them all _burn._

"Taylor," she said, and Boogeyman tried _really_ hard not to flinch at the use of her old name. She had been doing her best to distance herself from being Taylor Hebert. Taylor had been a good girl who had tried to live with all the horrors in the world, even if they had come from her friends. Boogeyman wasn't like that. She wasn't going to roll over for anyone if anything people were starting to roll over for her. She had found a small group of Empire wannabees and made them literally void their bowels with her mere presence. They had given up after that.

But Victoria, she didn't care about that. Even when she was downright terrified of her she would refer to her by her old name, her old self. She kept speaking as if she could still be Taylor Hebert as if somehow, she could still be who she was after all the bloodshed she had wrought. There was no going back after that.

"I-I just don't know if this is going to work," she admitted, twisting a lock of her golden hair in concern. "Lung, Lung won't get afraid. He'll just burn everything to the ground and move on with his life. People – monsters – like him, they don't get scared."

Boogeyman blinked in surprise. Then she started laughing. It was a true laugh, the kind that shook your bones and made your breath faint as you desperately gasped for air. Not that Boogeyman needed to breathe, but the roar of her laughter made little difference in the end. She could feel Victoria's anger and frustration building as she started to calm down.

"Is that what you think?" Boogeyman asked through a series of light giggles.

"Well, yeah," she said, though her tone wasn't as nearly as certain as it had been a few moments ago. Boogeyman just continued to chuckle, stoking the latent anger of Victoria.

"Monsters are born from fear Victoria, that's why they become monsters," Boogeyman explained with a slight smile. "For all the anger that Lung might hold at the very core of his being is a man that is afraid. He fears being powerless, of death and his ruin. Kaiser shared this fear in a different shade, fearing loss of control above all else. Their fear has driven them into becoming the monster that they are now."

Victoria stared at her with a contemplative expression, her mind moving at a thousand miles per minute. "So… people break the law because they're afraid?"

Boogeyman shrugged her shoulders, "At the core of it yes. Strip away the reasoning and at the core of every argument is a fear or terror that drives their actions. A man who turned criminal because he feared not having enough money, a woman who fled CPS because she feared for her child. These are all shades of fear, but a mere shadow of the kind that makes monsters."

"And—and what makes monsters?" Victoria asked, her voice small and uncertain. She could feel the wariness rolling off of her in waves, wanting to know the answer but at the same time wanted to remain ignorant.

"A fear so great and powerful that it consumes all that they were and will be," Boogeyman said, her lips curling into distaste. She knew that she herself had allowed her own fear to command her, which was not something that she could easily admit. Fear of being chained and trapped by an authority content to let the world whittle away so long as they could keep their castle. Fear of everything that her father and mother had worked towards, a brighter future of the Bay, being ground into the dust and ash. At the very least she directed her fear towards a more productive outcome unlike those that hoarded power like gold.

"They allow themselves to be defined by their fear and are willing to sacrifice anything or anyone in order keep themselves away from it. They would burn the world if it kept them safe," Boogeyman said, her humor fading from her tone. "I suppose the Slaughterhouse would be the best example of this."

"The Slaughterhouse Nine!" Victoria screeched, pure panic causing her form to tremble like a leaf on the wind. "They're-they're _afraid?"_ Boogeyman would have been able to hear the disbelief in her tone even without her emotion sense. She smirked at the girl's doubt. The Slaughterhouse 9 was one of the worst parahuman kill gangs on the continent. They sowed terror and death in their wake. To come to know that everything they did was out of their own fear and terror would certainly be contrary to what most people believed.

"The Slaughterhouse are afraid, more so than even most monsters. They drench themselves in it, killing thousands in order to gain one second of relief from the terror that nips at their heels. The fear that gnaws at the very core of themselves. They have allowed them to be defined by their fear and nothing else, constantly seeking relief amongst the slaughter. They are fools of course, as the path they have chosen will lead to nothing but their ruination," Boogeyman let out an amused chuckle, "Ironic that they have chosen the very path that will never allow them to relinquish their fear."

She wasn't quite sure how she knew this given that she had never met the Slaughterhouse before, but she supposed that she had read enough reports on PHO to read between the lines so to speak. Of course, talking about those losers granted her nothing at the moment other than the terror of her teammate. And while it was a sweet snack, it was hardly the fear that she wanted.

"At any rate, let me assure you Victoria, Lung does fear," Boogeyman said. "Though I will admit that the nature of his power will make him more difficult to bring low than most, I have a special surprise for him that will help build the foundation that I need."

"You mean all of this?" Victoria asked, gesturing towards the dressed-up mannequin. Boogeyman supposed she could understand how thinking a set of clothes would be able to scare Lung would be a ludicrous idea if they didn't know what she knew.

* * *

 _Several Weeks Ago…_

Taylor supposed it was ironic that even after getting powers people didn't even notice her. She was nothing more than a ghost walking along the street, unseen and uncared for by all. She couldn't even touch them, passing through them as if she were made of air. It felt unnatural, like dunking her insides in cold water.

She didn't even bother trying to go home to see Dad. The thought of him not being able to see her made her feel as if her heart was in a vice. Besides, he would probably be better off without her. It wasn't as if they had had a very close relationship these past few years. Not since Mom died at the very least.

She wasn't even sure where she was supposed to go now. Not home, that was for certain. But it wasn't as if there was anywhere left for her to be. Emma had long since renounced her friendship and the bullying had put a crimp in making any new friends. So, all that was left for her to do was wander the streets of Brockton Bay until the sun came up and forced her back into the shadows.

She wasn't sure how far she had walked, she had long ago stopped paying attention when she felt it. A fear so great that it burned at the very soul, a gnawing cancer at the very core. It had taken her some time to realize that she had been feeling people's fears and terrors, and it was more than a little uncomfortable. To have a stranger's darkest secrets laid out before her like an open book twisted her the wrong way. It reminded her too much of Emma's torments to make her comfortable

Even though every drop of terror felt like an energy drink.

But this fear, this made all of that embers in the breeze. Taylor peeked her head around the corner to get a glimpse of the source of this wellspring of terror. Her heart would have skipped a beat if it had still been working at the towering sight before her.

The man was a veritable mountain of muscle, a solid slab of flesh and bones that made some of her dad's dockworkers look like toothpicks. His torso was bare despite the winter chill, but that wasn't what caught her attention the most. No, instead her gaze focused on the metal mask applied to his face, shaped into a facsimile of a roaring dragon.

 _Lung._

The terror of the docks, the Dragon of Kyushu. Her gaze drifted to the stylized dragons that painted the walls of the decrepit buildings. She had seen them, but she hadn't paid much attention to them. How far had she traveled into ABB territory without realizing it?

He was talking to a small group of ABB gang members who were listening with varying degrees of uncertainty and fear. But none of their fears could compare to the one that burned Lung down to the very core of who he was, like a set stain on a shirt, it was something that would never go away.

It wasn't like the fleeting terror of the gang members who feared he would kill them on the spot if they failed, this was a much more deep-seated fear. This had been the fear that had shaped him into the monster he was now, an uncaring brute who terrorize a city because he _could._

 _He was just like Sophia._

Taylor could feel her anger simmering as she took note of Lung's fear and the woman in the suit. The one thing aside from Leviathan and Yàngbǎn that chilled him to the bones. It governed every action he took, masking itself as a burning rage as he struggled to prevent himself from being in that position ever again.

No, wait, he wasn't like Sophia – he was like _her._

He had been scared and beaten down by someone stronger than he was. Only unlike her, he lashed out at the world around him, hurting everyone and everything in a desperate attempt to stave off the pain, like a drowning person flailing in the water, pushing their rescuers under the waves in a desperate attempt to grab some air.

That made her mad far more than she would have liked to admit to herself.

She didn't stay to see what they were talking about, instead slipping back off before she did something rash. Even if people couldn't see her she didn't want to risk earning Lung's ire.

 _Rage born from fear._

That thought stewed in her mind, was that the reason that all these parahumans turned to crime because they were afraid of something. Was Sophia like this? A scared little girl who was lashing out at the world around them?

Perhaps she should give the girl a visit. It wasn't as if there was anything that she could do that could hurt her any more than she already had. But as she walked off she made sure she remembered the woman in the suit and what she had done to Lung. Perhaps there was something her powers were good for after all.

* * *

"Trust me on this Victoria. Lung is afraid of this," Boogeyman said with a grin as she dusted some dust off the suit.

"If you say so," Victoria said, doubt still coloring her tone. Boogeyman decided to let it rest. Trying to convince the girl wouldn't be worth the effort when she could just prove it to her through action.

"In any event, what Lung fears isn't your problem right now. I want you focusing on Coil," Boogeyman said. The parahuman paused, feeling a slight trace of frustration twisting in Victoria's aura. "Problem?"

"Well, I mean, I always thought Coil was small time," she explained, folding her arms across her chest.

"That's what he wants people to think," Boogeyman said. Or at the very least that was the impression that she had gotten of him. She still hadn't been able to find him yet, but then again it wasn't as if she had had much time these last few days. But from what she had gotten from his little pet spy he was more concerned about staying in the shadows that grand displays of power like Kaiser or Lung. "But he's much more influential than he likes people to think he is."

"I dunno, I just feel like I'd be better against Lung more than anything," Victoria said kicking a stray pebble with an almost pouty expression. Boogeyman had to keep her eyes from rolling at the display.

"You want to be at the full front of Lung wrath?" she asked. She raised a hand to cut off whatever Victoria was about to say. "Keep in mind that you won't be the hero of New Wave that he has to hold back on lest he gets a kill order, but instead you'll an independent. Also remember that he's going to be _very, very_ angry with me."

Victoria's mouth clicked shut with a snap, her face rapidly paling at the thought of facing an enraged Lung. She shook her head, blonde hair splaying out against her face.

"That's what I thought," Boogeyman muttered.

"So, what _am_ I going to be doing?" Victoria asked as some color returned to her face. Boogeyman pulled a piece of paper out of her robes and handed it to the blonde haired parahuman. Victoria took the list and read through the names listed on them, brows furrowing in confusion.

"You'll be paying these individuals a little visit while I go against Lung," Boogeyman explained. Victoria's face turned ashen again as she paused at one of the names on the list.

"Some of these are PRT agents," she protested. Boogeyman could feel the fear warping in her mind. She didn't want to be involved in the harming of people that were just trying to do their jobs. Neither did Boogeyman, of course, expect the people on that list _weren't_ doing their jobs.

"Those individuals are all spies for Coil," she said, halting the older girl's half-formed protests in her throat. She could feel the girl's surprise as she began to look at the list with a new eye.

" _All_ of them?"

A rather reasonable question given that it wasn't a very short list. Certainly, far more than should be allowed. Boogeyman wasn't a fool, she knew all too well that trying to worm out _every_ spy from an organization was a futile endeavor. There were just too many points of failure to consider trying that. But Coil's list was far more comprehensive than what she would have expected from a small time operation.

The fact that dear old Lewis had been placed in the perfect position to monitor new parahumans for Coil to snatch up before the Protectorate was concerning enough. It demonstrated that the man knew exactly how to get his men in trusted positions to use them to his advantage.

"Yes. Some of them the Protectorate might have already picked up since they've had Lewis cooling in their cells for the last few days, but most of them should still be free," Boogeyman said. "I want you to pay them a visit and see if they can't be _convinced_ to rat out on their employer."

"Okay, then I'll just fly through their roofs and…"

"No," Boogeyman said, cutting the girl off.

"What do you mean 'no'?" she asked, putting her hands on her hips.

"I'd think that you'd want to avoid connecting your identity to Glory Girl? Or does there happen to be another Alexandria package with an emotion aura somewhere in the city?" Boogeyman asked with a raised eyebrow. Victoria flushed in embarrassment, realizing that she was right. Anything that could connect her to Glory Girl was a risk that she couldn't take if she wanted to keep her family out of this.

"Then what am I supposed to do?" Victoria asked.

"My Nightmares can get you there. If you avoid using your strength too much and don't fly I don't think they'll be able to connect the two of you together," Boogeyman said, gesturing towards one of her steeds. She tried not to relish in the fear that Victoria felt as the beast in question approached them, but it was quite amusing. "Don't be afraid, that only riles them up."

Boogeyman held back an amused grin at the decidedly unamused glare from the blonde parahuman.

"I've never ridden a horse before," Victoria protested.

"And if you ride him you still won't have. They might look like horses, but they aren't – they're physical manifestations of nightmares. They won't act like horses, so don't expect to watch a video to get some help," Boogeyman pointed out.

"They're nightmares?" Victoria asked, a slightly pensive concern entering her aura. "Are you sure you're not just projecting?"

Boogeyman blinked in surprise, not quite understanding what Victoria was talking about. "What?"

"Studies show that parahumans, particularly those with projection based Master powers, tend to rationalize their powers as something that they really aren't and then project that belief onto them. You see it in people that think they're descended from gods or spirits, or those that think their projections are the ghosts of their loved ones," Victoria explained, earning another surprised blink from Boogeyman. Victoria gave her an amused smirk. "I'm not just a dumb blonde, I _am_ taking college level parahuman studies."

"Right," Boogeyman said, still trying to process what had just happened. It wasn't as if she believed that Victoria was stupid, but that just seemed out of character from the energetic and headstrong girl that she knew. "Well, they're nightmares."

That much she knew with absolute certainty, right down to her bones. She wasn't sure how she exactly knew that information and if she tried to explain it the girl would probably think she was crazy. But she knew that these were physical manifestations of people's nightmares. Fear made real.

"You're sure you don't need my help with Lung?" Victoria asked as she put a hesitant hand on the Nightmare's snout. The beast snorted in content as she began to stroke his sandy form.

"No, I'll be fine on my own. Besides, it's time for Deimos to make her first appearance," Boogeyman said with a grin.

* * *

Boogeyman dropped out of the shadows cautiously, eyeing the room around her for any surprises. It wouldn't do to go through all this trouble and planning only to be thwarted by a stray booby trap. It had taken her some time tracking this place down, thought she had to admit it had been easier that she had initially thought it would have been. Though she supposed the threat of Lung would have been enough to deter most investigations into the man's personal life. Not seeing any booby traps that might endanger her, Boogeyman pulled her cargo out of the shadow zone, careful not to make too much noise, lest she wake the sleeping dragon.

 _He is no dragon._

The room in question was actually quite nice given they were in the middle of gang territory. Though given who the occupant was she supposed that was a given. Why would Lung settle for anything less than the best when it came to his own lodgings? Who cared about the people trying to scrape by a living when he had much more important things to do like laze on the couch all day while his minions stole people's hard-earned money.

He wasn't a dragon, he was a leech, only seeking to fulfill his own desires. Even his own men were nothing more than pawns to the man, tools to obtain even more wealth. She bit back a growl at the small stack of bills on his desk. Small to him anyway, to anyone else it would have been enough for two or three months. Boogeyman glared at the man sprawled out across his huge bed with a glare that could have warped steel.

 _Let's see how much you like this,_ she thought as she adjusted the mannequin. Taking a deep breath Boogeyman allowed herself to become intangible, not quite shadow, but not quite solid either. Instead, she was more of a floating liquid, a dark shape in the air. She attached herself to the plastic structure, seeping through the false skin and into the very core. She could feel herself spread out along it, seizing control of the manmade creation.

It was odd looking through the eyes of the of the device, particularly since it had no eyes. Her vision was still centered around where its eyes would be if it was a real person, but she could move them around the body as if they were on a track. Her gaze twisted around the room every which way, checking that there were no booby traps set to snare any unsuspected visitors. There weren't any, but she supposed that Lung wouldn't sully his room with such 'underhanded' devices. Never mind that he had about half a dozen armed guards in the building ready to wake him up at a moment's notice, or the security cameras on each floor. Though she supposed that the threat of waking Lung up was threat enough to keep even the most foolish neo-Nazi from attacking this place, assuming they even knew what it was for.

The joints of the mannequin creaked in slight protest as she flexed them a little, testing to make sure that they worked. They weren't exactly designed to move like a real person, but they were good enough for this. She picked up the leftover drugs from the Merchants, careful to get a good grip on them. The last thing she needed was for this entire thing to fall apart because she had slippery hands. She froze as Lung's form twitched a bit, though she allowed herself to relax as nothing more came from it.

She made her way across the room and came to a stop by the sleeping man's bed. The mountain of a human being was resting peacefully, completely unaware of what was about to happen to him. She was extremely tempted to try and run a spear through his heart and just be done with it, but she was uncertain how much of his regeneration he kept while in this form. He got stronger the longer he fought, but details on how strong he actually was were rather scarce. There were some rumors that he could survive his head being chopped off, but she sincerely doubted the authenticity of those whispers. More likely the man was spreading tales about himself to make people less willing to fight him. She might have approved his use of fear if she didn't find him utterly disgusting.

It had been _his_ men that had scarred Emma's psyche and turned her into a shivering wreck. While Sophia had been the one to twist her into something else, it had been the ABB that had shattered the girl that she had once called her sister. He _was_ going to pay for that.

Boogeyman raised the chunk of drugs above his mouth, and then shoved down with as much force as her borrowed shell could muster.

As the drugs were shoved through his lips the man's eyes popped open, raw panic coursing down his body. She watched as his eyes locked with her form, and the panic redoubled, this time laced with anger and rage. The arms of the mannequin snapped as the man shot up from the bed, spewing the drugs that infested his mouth out as he gasped for air. She watched for a moment as his panicked breaths became more controlled, and the fear that had gripped his heart like an icy claw now gave way to hate. But despite that, she could still feel it buried underneath there, like seeds of a fruit.

"You," he rumbled his voice like two boulders being smashed together, his tone heavy with anger and hate older than his chosen name. The temperature of the room started to rise as he turned around, already starting to grow an inch or two. "Have made a very grave mistake."

Taylor made her body take a minute step forward, and for a brief moment, she saw Lung flinch from the sight of her. It was hardly anything, barely even noticeable unless you were her, but she knew exactly what it meant. Lung was afraid.

Even lacking his fire and flames his eyes blazed like a pair of infernos, promising death and pain to her. Boogeyman slipped from the mannequin, letting it crumple to the floor as she retook her physical form. The hatred in Lung's eyes only increased as she gave him a mocking smile.

"Well then Kenta, show me your rage. Show me how weak you are, and know that everything that you have done as been in fear of her," Boogeyman said, waving a hand towards the mannequin. Even as she did that she warped her voice to that of the woman's or at the very least what he remembered the woman's voice to be. She could fell the chill of terror from the man even as his white-hot anger reached a boiling point. Lung let out a bestial roar despite his still human appearance, his face twisted into a rictus of rage as he charged forward, arms outstretched, ready to crush her skull in the palms of his hands. Boogeyman jumped back into a shadow with a mocking laugh.

She reappeared outside of the apartment complex with a smile, startling the man behind the door on guard duty. She saw him fumble for his pistol, but a quick glare from her and the man was sent scrambling back, no doubt seeking out his now enraged master. Boogeyman craned her neck up to look up at Lung's apartment on the highest story. She could see the faint glow as the man rampaged through his own home, no doubt looking for her. The glass window shattered, raining down bits and pieces all around her, but she paid them no mind as Lung's head popped out, glaring down at her.

" **You** ," he growled, soft but strong, the promise of pain and death and so much worse. She could see that he was considering jumping straight down to kill her, but she could feel his hesitation of trying to jump from that height. He also knew that the less he was fighting her, the slower he would ramp up. By the time he got to the bottom of the building he would lose what little steam he had already built up and would have to start again.

"What's the matter Lung? Scared of the truth? That for all your power you're still weak? You didn't climb a waterfall to get yours," Boogeyman said, twisting her lips into a sneer. That last little bit had been a result of a day's search into any information about Lung that she could find. Unfortunately, the internet was the internet and she had found herself sidetracked by a few legends about dragons. But still, it was proving to be a boon since she knew how Lung got his powers.

"Power born out of defeat, no wonder you're so _weak_. How does it feel to know that for all that you have done, for all the power you have tried to grasp at, you're still beholden to the woman in the suit?" Boogeyman asked, relishing in the tremor of fear that racked down Lung's spine at the mention of the woman.

Lung screamed, literally howling in rage as he turned away from the window. She could practically hear him bounding down the stairs, ready to rip her to shreds for her insolence. She could feel the fear of the man who had been moving to warn his master of her cut short as Lung shoved him aside with all the care of a broken toy, shattering the man's neck as he struck the wall. The last thing he felt was an unrelenting terror at the sight of his enraged leader charged down the flight of stairs like a mad bull.

Boogeyman watched as the man erupted from the building with the rage of a madman, tearing at her like a wild beast. She backed off, dissolving into shadows and putting some distance between the two of them.

"Sorry Lung, you'll have to try better than that," she said as she reformed her body, Phobia reforming underneath her.

"You will die," the man uttered. Not a threat but a singular promise. In his mind, she would suffer tenfold what she put him through, and even that would not be enough. It was almost amusing to her that Lung thought that he could put her through anything more than she had already been through.

 _He knows nothing of pain._

"Come then, Lung. Let me show you how weak you are," Boogeyman said, holding her arms out as if to invite the man in for a hug. The man let out another howl as his body grew about an inch, throwing himself at the cape and her steed.

"Let me show you the _truth_."

* * *

 **Even Lung knows fear.**

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	27. Nightmare 4-2

**Enjoy!**

Nightmare 4.2

Boogeyman let out a taunting laugh as Phobia carried her down the empty streets. No fool in their right minds would travel so deep into ABB territory at night. Spray painted dragons covered the walls, warning everyone who ruled this part of the city with impunity, and the dangers of traversing it. They were all locked away in their cozy little houses and tucked into their beds and their dreams and nightmares danced in their subconscious minds.

Of course, none of that was Boogeyman's concern at the moment. Right now, her focus was strictly on the _very_ angry Lung rampaging behind her. His howls of rage echoed through the street as he tried to keep up with her steed. She could have left him in the dust from the get go, Phobia could fly and Lung couldn't – at least not yet. She could have left him to stew in his somewhat justifiable anger given that she had quite literally shoved his Trigger event into his face with all the care of a bull in a china shop. A small, _small_ part of her felt some pangs of sympathy towards the man for having to go through something like that, a feeling of helplessness that she understood all too well. But it was mostly washed away by the overriding contempt that she felt for how he had wasted his life with petty crime.

"I'll ki'll y'u!" he roared, his mouth starting to twist into an inhuman shape. His bare feet pounded against the asphalt as he tried to keep up, silver scales starting to emerge from his skin. Human dentures started to shift into a more fang-like state as he snarled like the mad dog that he was.

"How can you kill what you cannot catch?" she asked, turning her head around to give the man a mocking laugh. She was only a few yards away from him, so close and yet so far. The man howled again, his size increasing inch by inch as more and more scales burst forth from his flesh. The silvery keratin structures were almost beautiful in their own deadly way. She had watched a video clip of those very same scales taking fire from an AK-47 without so much as a dent.

For all her taunting though, she knew that she was playing with fire, quite literally so, as small flames started to waft off the man's form. If Lung so desired he could burn down most of the docks if he wanted to. The Protectorate and even the other gangs would likely come to try and stop him if he ever went that far, but given his powers that just screamed like a recipe for disaster.

Boogeyman allowed herself to pull further ahead of the gang leader as she made a sharp right into what was a dead-end street. Officially the buildings that surrounded the road were all abandoned and hadn't been used in years. But the largest of them was actually a drug lab for the ABB. It was a relatively minor operation compared to the total money that the ABB made, but it was a start.

Boogeyman pulled Phobia to a stop right in front of the building, ignoring the panicked cries from the lookout on the second story window. She didn't have time to deal with grunts, even if his fear was quite tasty. She frowned a bit as Lung started to slow down, a more calculating look entering his eye as he slowed his approach to her. Apparently, the man wasn't entirely a beast, he had some modicum of intelligence to recognize that something was up.

Well, that wouldn't do.

"What's the matter Kenta? Afraid to get close to a few drugs?" she asked with a wicked smile. She didn't even need to see the man's emotions to know that that had stuck a rather sensitive spot for the man. His slowly transforming face twisted in rage as his lips started to shrink back to make more room for his sharpening teeth. No words came from this throat, only a scream of pure rage as he cast aside his caution and barreled straight towards her. Talons erupted from his fingers as he prepared to impale her, only to find empty air once more as she urged Phobia to slam straight into the door, knocking if from its frame like tinfoil. She had her steed duck through one of the hallways, tramping one of the unfortunate men to get in their way. She could hear Lung's footsteps behind her as his large form tore through the shattered doorway.

She had Phobia dive through the meth lab and tear out the plastic draped window into the alley behind the building. She pulled the Nightmare to a stop as she felt the panic spike in the house as the occupants realized what was about to happen as Lung's flaming form followed her trail.

The lab went up in a flash of heat and light, as windows and doors were blown apart as the force looked for every crack it could to escape the confines of the room. She could hear the shortly lived panicked screams of the men as their clothing caught fire and they were thrown across the rooms like ragdolls. There was a sharp crack as _something_ apparently important snapped. Boogeyman watched with detached interest as part of the building collapsed in on itself, burying Lung and his men in wood and plaster.

 _That was unexpected,_ she thought as she watched the pile of rubble stir. She had expected the explosion, but having the building collapse was an unforeseen development.

She had known that the men had knocked down one of the walls to make room for the lab, but that wall must have had one of the more important support beams in the building, and the explosion was the straw that broke the camel's back. She could only imagine how angry Lung had to be now.

The flaming wreckage burst apart like an erupting volcano as Lung's form pulled itself from the ruins. A smile stretched across the young woman's pale lips.

 _Oh, that's right. I don't_ have _to imagine._

If the man was furious before, he was downright apoplectic now. His body had increased in size, adding another foot to his height, and his scales had already covered most of his flesh. There were a few spots that looked scuffed and dented from the collapse, and some of his scales were covered in soot and grime, but otherwise, he was unharmed.

"Y'll p'y f' t'th," he growled out through his fangs. Boogeyman let out an amused laugh at the man's words as if he had just told some hilarious joke.

"What did I ever do? I wasn't the one to bring the building down, that was all on you. You killed your own men because you were too stupid to realize what you were doing," Boogeyman said, clicking her tongue in disappointment towards the man's actions. She knew that Lung didn't give one iota of concern towards his men. The man only cared about himself, and everyone and everything else were just tools that he could use to further his own greed. What the man _did_ care about was his ego. Insulting him in such a manner wouldn't surely stoke the flames of anger and hate.

The roar she received in return only proved her point. The man snarled as he knocked the wreckage aside with his scaled hands, claws tearing wood to shreds with errant flicks of his wrist. He would have been quite the intimidating sight if she couldn't read his every feeling. All of this was in response to her little scare, his way of trying to save face. The fact that they were the only two who knew about it was irrelevant. All that mattered was that he needed to reassert his authority over himself, he needed to _prove_ that he wouldn't be cowed but such memories.

It was pathetic how far he was willing to go to do that.

She gave the man a bored look as she urged Phobia to move, keeping them out of the man's range. That boredom quickly turned to shock as Lung leaped for them as if he was jumping into a pool, arms stretched out as far as they could go. The parahuman came on them like a silver sun, eyes blazing in heat and fury.

"Move!" Boogeyman barked, digging her heels into her steed's side even as she pushed the order into its mind with such force that it physically recoiled. The personification of Emma's nightmares moved with a burst of speed, tearing apart the ground as if rushed forward to escape Lung. The would-be dragon roared as its prey escaped his grasp once more. Dust and dirt were flung into the air as he fell onto the earth like an anvil.

Boogeyman took a deep breath as she watched the man pull himself back up. Her yellow eyes trailed his form with renewed wariness and suspicion. In the depths of her mind, she berated herself for allowing herself to fall complacent and letting Lung get the drop on her like that. She couldn't let that happen again. Despite the man's reputation, he was no dumb brute, and if she gave him an ounce of weakness he would rip her apart.

"You must truly be powerful Lung if you can afford to wallow in the dirt while your enemy stands by," Boogeyman taunted in an attempt to hide how off-putting that attack had been. She hadn't expected the man to put that much of himself into one attack and leave himself open, but she supposed that he was getting some tunnel vision. Anger tended to do that to a person. The man let out a low growl as he retook his footing, the plants crumbling to ash beneath his feet as his flames flared in anger.

Surprisingly none of them seemed to extend towards the buildings and instead clung to him like a second skin. She supposed that made a sort of sense, Lung was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them. The Protectorate might tolerate him burning down an abandoned building or two, but if he crossed the line they would drop the hammer on him. In a neighborhood like this, the flames would spread from building to building like a wildfire. It would be at least ten minutes before firefighters could arrive, and by that time the fire would be well out of control. Even in his haze of rage Lung could apparently realize that was a very bad idea.

A pity that the Protectorate was willing to wait for such destruction before they got serious, but if they had actually bothered to do their jobs she wouldn't have to be here right now. As Lung's ear shattering roar shook her bones, she had to wonder how Victoria, or Deimos as she was known now, was doing with her little search.

* * *

Victoria double checked the next address she had been given as she mentally crossed the previous name off the list.

The last house had been a bust, the individual in question had already been taken into PRT custody and his house searched. There had been nothing there for her to find. The teenage parahuman felt a brief glimmer of frustration as she ordered the Nightmare forward. It felt strange and alien flying without her own power, and even now she longed to be one with the sky. Aside from her invincibility, her flight was one of her favorite powers, and not being able to use it irked her.

She understood Taylor's reasoning as to why she needed to hide her powers, but it still didn't make it any less frustrating. Add to the fact that this sort of heroing was out of her comfort zone and she was nowhere near the best of her moods. She was used to beating criminals with her fists and asking questions later, this whole "interrogation" thing was a bit outside of her specialty. She could ask questions, but trying to keep the people from responding with insults and fists wasn't exactly her strong suit.

"That's the next house," Victoria said, pointing towards the innocent looking house on the edge of the street. The Nightmare beneath her snorted as it trotted across the open air towards their destination. Her voice sounded strange to her ears, muffled and distorted by the contours of the mask. The skull visage glared out into the world, the blonde hair flowing from the back of her head, an odd contrast to the intimidating mask. The dark colors of her outfit covered her entire body, unlike her Glory Girl costume, masking her identity from the world. Victoria and her entourage of Nightmares came to a stop above the house, their hooves standing on the air as if it were solid ground.

"Is he there?" she asked, directing the question towards her steed. She didn't want to rip through the building to find that he wasn't even home. The Nightmare's nostrils flared as if it was taking in the scent of the air, before giving her a snort and a nod. Victoria gave the Nightmare an idle stroke of the mane, earning a pleased ear twitch. As she considered how she was going to do this her gaze zeroed in on a van on the other side of the street. It was an unmarked and featureless van, but she had seen enough of them to recognize a PRT van.

 _Great,_ she grumbled in the back of her head. Fighting the PRT was not something that she had planned for, or wanted to do at all. Still, it was heartening to see that the organization was actually doing something proactive regarding the spies and moles. A complication for her, but not one that she couldn't overcome. She would just have to be a bit more discreet… which didn't bode well for her actually. She wasn't so nonself-aware that she didn't realize the word subtle didn't exactly apply to her. She was loud and boisterous and her aura naturally drew attention to herself more often than not. It made trying to remain unnoticed by teachers when she didn't have the answer to the questions extremely difficult.

"Whatever," the parahuman muttered as she tugged on her steed's reins. Trying to sneak in without being detected would be an exercise in futility since her only options were to smash down whatever obstacles were in her path. She would just have to make sure she was in and out before the PRT agents could intervene. Thinking about it, it wasn't likely that they would try to stop her without parahuman backup anyway. Embolden by her logic, the teen pushed her Nightmare down towards the second story of the building. The creature snorted as they came to stop just outside the man's bedroom. Victoria watched the inert form of the man as he laid on the bed for a moment as she steeled herself. This was it, the point of no return. After this, her new identity would be revealed to the world and there would be no turning back.

 _This is for Amy,_ the blonde parahuman assured herself as she urged her steed forwards towards their target. The Nightmare let out something that was between a snort and a roar as it bellowed forward in a surprising display of speed. Victoria was only just able to hold on as they smashed through the glass and part of the framework. There was a startled screech as the man was flung back off the bed in surprise. A concealed gun clattered to the ground uselessly as he struggled to untangle himself from his mess of bed sheets. Victoria said nothing as her steed's hooves clicked against the floor like a bad omen. As the man finally tore himself free from the blankets and made a dive for the downed gun, her Nightmare's hoof slammed into the metal construct, crushing it under its weight. The man's skin became a shade paler as he craned his neck from the ground to get a good look at her.

She could only imagine how she appeared to the man. Sitting on a nightmarish steed with razors for teeth and baleful yellow eyes that glowed as if they were an inferno. A cold mask glaring down at him, the mouth shaped into a slight smile to mock the man's quivering. Victoria let her aura loose, and the feeling of terror and awe washed over the man like a tsunami as his mouth dropped open in stupefaction. She could see the slight tremors that wracked his frankly unfit body. She supposed that she should be grateful that he was wearing a pair of pajamas. She didn't think she would make a good impression if she kept on ducking her head to the side every time she tried to talk to him.

"Gregory Carter," she said, her voice unrecognizable through the mask. She eyes were the only part of her face that was visible through the mask, and right now they were glaring down at the quivering man. The man nodded hesitantly, too nervous to form any words.

"I heard that you like to gossip," she said as she slipped off her steed. She cheated a bit by using the tiniest portion of her flight to raise herself from the Nightmare's backside. Nothing noticeable, but enough to guarantee that she wouldn't slip up and fall over as she dismounted.

"W-what?" the man stuttered, her aura putting quite the whammy on him. A thin sheen of sweat covered his forehead, his eyes bulging in fear as he stammered a response out. "Wh-what are you talking about?"

"Yeah, I hear that you like to spread gossip a lot, especially with _snakes_ ," Victoria said, her voice becoming sharper. She watched as the man flinched a bit at the steel in her voice, but there was a light of recognition in his eyes. He knew what she was talking about, and judging by the way he was swallowing in fear, he understood that this wasn't going to be a pleasant visit.

"Who told you?" Carter asked, his face ashen and utterly devastated as a pair of Nightmares slipped through the broken wreck of a window and started to circle him. Victoria had watched a documentary about sharks and found the behavior to be quite similar. Though she doubted that the man would be too pleased by that little tidbit of information.

Victoria old shrugged at the man's question. "My…partner, Boogeyman," she said. She might as well have told him that she was working with the Grim Reaper the way that his skin paled. Quite frankly she didn't even know that people could even turn that shade of white without a Changer rating. Clearly, the man had heard of her.

"W-what does she want w-with me?" the man asked through his shivering, only made even more prominent by her aura. She supposed that she was lucky that he seemed to be a coward at heart, people always reacted to her aura differently. Some would end up showering her with praise while others would get angry and close off. Carter though, he seemed to be weaker than a wet noodle in term of willpower.

"Well, she's not too pleased that you've been working for Coil, and I can't say that I'm very happy with it either," Victoria said, a growl entering her tone. Quite frankly, people like Carter pissed her off. If anything, she preferred it when criminals were overt in their actions instead of trying to play the part of the angel. Though she wasn't a Ward, she did place a certain degree of trust in the PRT and Protectorate when she was heroing. She had to know that she could call for help when she needed it and that it would be given the consideration that it deserved. To know that there were people like Carter weeding their way through the organization, not to better the world, but to make a quick buck boiled her blood.

"P-please," the man whimpered as he tried to crawl back. But the man found himself stopped short as he brushed up against a Nightmare, earning a spine-shaking shiver as the soulless eyes of the creature glared down at him.

"This is what's going to happen," Victoria said as she marched up towards the man's cowering form. She loomed over the man, her skull mask glaring down at him as if she was death itself. "You're going to tell me everything you know about Coil and his men, or…"

"Or what?" the man asked, eyes flickering all around the room, looking for some form of escape.

"Or my friends here start breaking bones," she said, low and ominous. Part of her felt sick doing this. It was one thing to hurt and threaten someone that was actively committing a crime before her very eyes, but she had broken into this man's house to threaten him. But that didn't absolve him of his crimes, did it? He had still betrayed the PRT and Protectorate through his actions and actively assisted the criminal element in furthering their own agendas. That was enough to brush aside whatever uncertainty she had over doing this.

The man whimpered again, curling in on himself in an effort to shield himself from the glares of the invaders. His mouth opened and closed multiple times before he found his voice. It was less than a squeak, and Victoria didn't need a Thinker rating to know that he was downright terrified. She couldn't help but feel a thrill of pleasure run down her spine at the man's fear of retribution, of his villainous acts finally catching up to him.

"Coil, he'll kill me," Carter protested. Victoria shrugged her shoulders in an uncaring manner, though her opinion of Coil did drop a few rungs. Not that she had that high of an opinion of him in the first place, he _was_ a supervillain after all.

"He'll probably kill you anyway," Victoria said, bluffing a bit. She had no idea what Coil would actually do, but if the man wanted to let his imagination run wild she'd let him hang himself.

"What?" Carter asked with a bewildered and slightly fearful expression. Victoria smirked a little under her mask, even though the man couldn't see it.

"Well," she said, drawing the word out with an irritating inflection. "I wasn't too subtle coming in here, and I'm willing to bet that PRT truck outside is going to realize that something is wrong."

"P-PRT truck?" there was no mistaking the sheer _dread_ that coated his every word as if he realized where she was going with this but didn't want to put the pieces together himself.

Victoria only nodded at the man's stunned state. "Yep. Looks like they've realized you're not the paragon of justice you claim to be. Now, with all the spies that Coil has, how long do you think it will be before he realizes that they've found you out? A few days at best, a week if you're lucky."

Victoria wasn't quite as confident with her words as she would have liked to be. Threatening a criminal in this fashion was fairly unusual to her. Oh, she had made plenty of threats during her career as a hero, but those were always pretty straightforward physical ones. Threatening to break someone's arm or legs was a pretty standard practice as far as things went. Nothing like this psychological stuff that she was using now. Her own aura was probably making this far easier than it should have been, but she wasn't complaining.

Ironically, it did bear a remarkable resemblance to the tactics that she had witnessed and used herself in high school with all the other cliques. Trying to stay on top of the school was a grueling business, even if you had superpowers to cheat with.

 _Real life is like a group of girls arguing over the best cafeteria table, go figure,_ she thought with a roll of her eyes.

"Now," Victoria said, cutting off the coward's babbling. "If you tell me what I want to know, I'll drop you off at the PRT building. You'll confess to being a spy and will be placed in custody. Not a guarantee of safety, but it's unlikely that Coil will be able to get to you once even more scrutiny is placed on you."

It wasn't a promise of safety, that wasn't something that she could ensure and even if she could she wouldn't be inclined to provide it to a criminal like him. She wasn't going to kill him, but that didn't mean that she had to save him either.

"Okay," the man whimpered pathetically. "I'll tell you what you want to know."

The man yelped as she wrapped her fists around his clothing, pulling him up from the ground. Not enough to suggest that she had a Brute rating, but enough to make sure that his focus was solely on her.

"Start talking."

* * *

It was somewhat horrifying how much one man could influence a city. When Victoria had first heard of Coil she had been assured that he was a small-time crook who could barely command a few city blocks. He was a non-entity in terms of power. A tenacious cockroach that managed to survive a city full of Neo-Nazis and the Dragon of Kyushu, but that was the only notable thing about the villain. She had never even gotten a whiff of the man's powers. He was a nonfactor in her life and the lives of the heroes.

To find out that he had as much pull as he did was disconcerting. Case in point, Gregory Carter, the man that she had just spend a considerable amount of time threatening maintained a rather critical position at the PRT. He worked as a member of the department responsible for coordinating with other organization, specifically the prison transport conveys. He wasn't at the head, though that was a terrifying thought, however, he was well placed enough to leak critical information on transports to the gangs. She knew that Hookwolf had escaped his Birdcage convey before, but she had never really considered how the Empire prepared for such an endeavor.

Birdcage transports were designed to be as secure as they possibly could. They were far from perfect, but escaping one took an inordinate amount of time, planning, and resources. The majority of Birdcage transport escapes were facilitated by those who made it their living and specialty, like the old villain Madcap. And that was in the old days when the Birdcage was still very much a fledgling institution and hadn't reached the reputation and funding that it had today.

For the Empire to ensure Hookwolf's escape would have required a lot of planning and preparation. Such things could only be accomplished with detailed information as to how the transfer would work. She had just never considered how the Empire had acquired that information.

She couldn't really see what benefit Coil got out of it other than the continued conflict that followed each escape, but she wasn't interested in the why only the _how_. Coil was conspiring to aid the criminal element of the city and it was her job as a hero to deal with it. Victoria gave her costume a glance.

Well, her duty as a heroic vigilante in any case.

Late night drivers filled the streets below her as her steed passed into the safer downtown districts. Here it was less likely that a nighttime traveler would encounter a gang member, but Brocktonites knew better than to stay in one place for long. None of them would want to risk getting caught unaware, even if it was the "safest" place in the city. Somewhat ironically this was actually the area where most of the city's petty crime unaffiliated with the gangs took place.

The PRT had no interest in dealing with petty crooks when they had the likes of Kaiser and Lung to deal with, and the gangs had no desire to engage the local Protectorate in a full-blown turf war for the place. No matter how much good PR the PRT and Protectorate had, there was no way that they could allow a section of the city with so many affluent individuals to come under threat. That left this section of town a safe haven for all the little criminals who wanted to make a quick buck or two.

The fortress-like PRT building loomed in the distance, like a castle of old. Victoria twisted her head around to double check on her prisoner. Carter was no worse for wear, but he certainly looked like he had been put through the ringer. He clutched his steed/warden with an iron grip, eyes twisted shut in an effort to avoid looking down on the street far below. Satisfied that her prisoner wasn't going anywhere, she pulled on her own steed's reins, urging him to start descending.

Her hand shot up to shield her eyes as a spotlight atop the PRT wall swung towards her, nearly blinding her. Dark spots crossed along her vision as the sharp contrast with the night sky irritated her eyes. Her Nightmare snorted, clearly just as irritated about this development as she was. Their landing wasn't very smooth as the Nightmare was half blinded by the glare of the light, but they came to a stop a few feet in front of the building's outer walls as she had originally planned. As her eyes finally adjusted to the harsh glow of the light she could see that PRT troopers were taking up positions around her, containment foam sprayers in hand. She frowned a bit at the seemingly hostile treatment, then nearly smacked her head in realization that to them, she was a brand new and unknown parahuman.

"Parahuman, release your hostage and stand down!" Victoria winced a bit at the slight squeal of the megaphone that echoed across the asphalt. Victoria turned towards the Nightmare holding Carter and gave it a nod. The beast snorted and stalked up towards the assembled troopers. As is marched past her the troopers opened fire, coating the two of them in a thick layer of containment foam.

Victoria had possessed the misfortune of covered in the stuff a few years ago in a misfire on the part of a PRT agent. Even though she was one of the stronger Brutes in the city, her strength had been utterly useless in escaping the stuff. How Dragon had managed to make something so malleable yet so strong was beyond her, but that was Tinkers for you.

But as tough as it was, it utterly failed to contain the Nightmare as black sand slipped through the smallest of openings before retaking its form beside her. It snorted in irritation at its temporary imprisonment before falling back to join the other members of the herd.

"Parahuman! Stand down and prepare to be restrained, this is your last warning," the man on the other end of the megaphone ordered. Victoria rolled her shoulders, trying to appear as unconcerned as she possibly could. It was at that point that a stream of containment foam shot out towards her. She didn't know if the shooter had an itchy trigger finger or whether she had just used up her time, but she didn't have time to consider such things. She could feel herself preparing to fly away as a knee-jerk reaction, but her steed moved faster. Before she could realize what was going on, her Nightmare had already moved them out of the sprayer's effective range.

"Such a warm welcome," Victoria said sarcastically as the pile of containment foam began to harden into the inescapable prison that it was meant to be.

"Well, when an unknown parahuman is holding a PRT agent hostage, we typically don't roll out the welcome mat," another voice aside from megaphone man said. Victoria locked eyes with Triumph as he strolled through the gates without a car in the world. He looked ever the unflappable hero that he was meant to be. His lion-like helm gleamed even in the darkness of night, a sharp contrast to her own darker colors.

Victoria could say that while she knew Rory, she didn't know him that well. They were friendly acquaintances at best. She knew that he always tried to live up to the expectations of a hero the best he could, which had landed him in hot water more than once. He had always been kind to her, both in and out of costume, but they had never interacted that much beyond a professional capacity. He had been just a little too old to hang out with when he had been a Ward when she had first started dating Dean.

"And how are people that deliver traitorous spies treated?" Victoria asked as she tried to deepen her voice a little. She didn't think that he would be able to connect her civilian identity, but it was better to be safe than sorry. She could see that Triumph was visible startled by that claim, and looked to the mound of containment foam with a somewhat bewildered expression under his mask.

"I'm sorry?" he asked, confusion evident in his tone as he waved the PRT troopers to stand down. None of them looked too happy, but they all lower their containment foam sprayers so they aren't directly facing her. They could easily snap them back up and spray her within seconds though, so it would probably be best for her to finish this sooner rather than later.

"Gregory Carter was a spy for Coil. The PRT already knew that's why they were watching him," Victoria said simply. A couple of the troopers reacted a little bit, but the grey-haired man with the megaphone might as well have been a statue for all she could see. She wondered how much he had known about the whole situation.

"I see," Triumph said slowly, giving her an appraising eye. "You understand that we'll have to confirm that…"

"Deimos," Victoria said, trying her new cape name out loud for the first time. It was so different than what she was used to that she almost blurted out Glory Girl for a brief moment. And while she did love her name, she did have to admit that it sounded a bit childish now that she had aged a little bit. The stuff that sounded cool when you were younger didn't tend to age very well over time. "And don't worry about it, Boogeyman wanted me to drop him off here when I was done with him, so here you go," she said with a wave of her hand.

"You're working with Boogeyman?" Triumph asked, a hard edge entering his tone as he took a slightly more aggressive stance. She could see in the corner of her eyes that the PRT troopers were following the hero's lead, raising their foam sprayers.

"Yes, yes, I am," Victoria said. "Is that a problem?"

"Boogeyman is a dangerous villain, and any and all associates of hers should be considered the same," Triumph said, sounding as if he were quoting something. "Even if what you said regarding him is true, I can't allow you to go free. If you come with me now we can still work something out. Whatever Boogeyman is promising you isn't worth becoming a villain."

 _Yes, it is,_ Victoria thought, tightening her grip on her steed's reins. Whatever she did now would be worth the safety that it gave her sister. _Nothing_ was more important to her than that. Part of her wanted to argue that Boogeyman wasn't a villain like Kaiser of Coil, jut a very violent vigilante. But somehow she doubted that Triumph would care about that distinction. I'm afraid that I can't do that."

"Is that your final answer?" Triumph asked with a somewhat regretful tone.

"Yes," Victoria said simply. It was at that point that a wave of solid sound blasted into her like a speeding train, knocking her off her steed and sending her flying back. She grunted more out of surprise than anything else as she pushed herself off the ground to face the hero.

"What was that for?" she asked, shouting her question as her face turned red in anger underneath her mask. Her aura, which she had previously been keeping in check let loose, washing over the assembly before her. A few men visibly wilted under the pressure of her aura, but Triumph only flinched a little bit as he quite visibly steeled himself. "I give you a spy and you blast me in the face!?"

"As I said, all associates of Boogeyman are to be considered villains," the sound manipulating hero said. For a moment Victoria was tempted to ream him out but realized that she didn't have the same connections that she did as Glory Girl. She was an entirely new parahuman and one that was associated with someone that had killed before. "Now, I'm going to ask you and your minions to stand down before this gets too rough."

 _I hope Taylor is having a better night than I am,_ Victoria thought as she prepared to fight her way out of his situation.

* * *

 _I may have miscalculated a bit,_ Boogeyman thought as she dodged another chunk of concrete. The piece of rock whooshed past her face at breakneck speed before crashing into a thankfully abandoned building. _Just a little bit._

Boogeyman glanced behind her to catch a glance of the still beyond furious Lung. After her little trick with the meth lab, she had led the gang leader through several more of his establishments, burning them all to ash and rubble. She could tell that he knew what he was doing, or at the very least recognized that destroying his own business was a bad idea, but his only other option was to lose track of her and let her escape, something he couldn't allow. So instead he allowed himself to be used to destroy his own gang while he tried to kill her. It was almost awe inspiring the level of rage that she had awoken in Lung.

The man's growth had stalled out at about ten feet for the time being, but it was still more than enough to remind her that this was the man who had fought the entire local Protectorate at once and _won_. Silver scales covered the entirety of his body, providing him with comprehensive protection from attacks. His feet and hands had extended into clawed appendages that were as long as her head and could slice apart steel with ease. All in all, he was a terrifying enemy that would make most people quake in their boots.

She was not most people.

"All this rage, and still you have accomplished nothing but your own destruction," Boogeyman taunted, earning another bellow of rage. The street bubbled underneath the false dragon's feet like wet tar with each step he took. The air around him twisted as the heat of his flames warped the very atmosphere. The man was literally spitting mad, belching out torrents of fire to incinerate her form. Fortunately for her he didn't seem to have very good control after it left a certain radius around his form. It made dodging streams of fire much easier. A few of her Nightmares were on fire patrol behind Lung's rampage, trying to keep the misfires from spreading out of control.

But for all her preparation, she had to admit that she had slightly miscalculated on how fast the man's transformation would take over. It certainly wasn't instant, but it was much faster than she had been anticipating, even with limited combat on her part. She knew that Lung's power responded to threats to his being, or at the very least that's what all the speculation on PHO suggested. She had avoided engaging in direct conflict in order to limit his growth to something more manageable, but it appeared her little trick with the mannequin shot her up on his list of threats to his wellbeing.

It wasn't an ideal situation with his regeneration, but it was far from unsalvageable. She only needed to get him to a few more places before she could drive him towards and isolated area and leave him behind. Without a threat to focus on, the man's powers would eventually burn out until nothing was left, leaving behind a broken man.

"K' y!" he roared, his speech even less recognizable now that his maw was big enough to swallow her head whole. It was almost comical how large his mouth was compared to the rest of her head. A stream of fire bellowed from his mouth, shooting as straight as an arrow towards her form.

"Down," Boogeyman shouted, urging her steed into a shadow cast by a dilapidated bus stop. The duo fell in just as the flame struck, engulfing the station in an inferno. Boogeyman and Phobia emerged on top of a building further down the street.

"Do you want to know why you'll never kill me, nor the woman in the hat?" Boogeyman asked, drawing Lung's attention away from the bus stop as he dug through the wreckage for her broken body. His eyes blazed like twin stars of hate, a bubbling anger that no man could control. He let out a roar that shook her very bones as he rushed over to the building with all the haste he could muster. Boogeyman could feel the building shake as he used his impressive talons to climb up the building to kill her.

"It's because you're weak Lung. You might bully those beneath you all you like, but you have never once beaten someone more powerful than you. You know the woman could kill you without pause, to her you were even less than a tool. You know that Leviathan left because he chose to, not because of any action of yours. And you won't kill me because you can't kill the truth _Kenta._ This is who you are. A bully with a bit more power than others, terrorizing the weaker becuase deep down you know you aren't strong," she said with a wicked grin as Lung's eyes blazed in unquenched anger. She could tell that he was absolutely dying to kill her, but she was still out of reach despite his huge size.

Lung was about halfway up the building when something struck his right shoulder with a sharp crack. Lung roared in pain as the blood splashed out from the point of impact while armored scales were shredded and flesh was torn. Shards of bone clattered to the street below as Lung lost his grip on the building, falling to the ground with an earthshaking thud.

Boogeyman's gaze twisted over towards the source of the blast. Miss Militia's cold expression had no trace of emotion as she reloaded a rather large gun. Boogeyman bit back a curse at the woman's interference. Of all the times for the heroes to start doing their jobs, it had to be now of all times! The angry parahuman turned her attention back towards Lung and felt her heart plummet in her chest.

The wound was already starting to heal over, much faster that he had been healing previously. Lung rolled his shoulder as if test its effectiveness before turning her gaze back towards her. Despite the inhuman shape of his mouth, he still managed to turn his expression into a smirk as his size started to grow for the first time in the last five minutes. Even as Lung pulled himself from the ground another bullet struck him, this time in his much more heavily armored back. His scales charred and bent, but nothing that he couldn't heal. A noise filled the air, like two boulders being ground together, and it was at that moment that Boogeyman realized that Lung was laughing.

As his blazing gaze caught hers, Boogeyman realized that she may have miscalculated.

A _lot_.

* * *

 **So is it Taylor or Lung that's bitten off more than they can chew?**

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	28. Nightmare 4-3

**In which a nightmare is born.**

 **Enjoy!**

Nightmare 4.3

Boogeyman had learned quite a list of expletives from her father's men back when she had been Taylor Hebert. Despite knowing more than most, she had never been inclined to use them much before now. But even knowing all the ones that she did, none of them seemed to encompass her feelings on the matter below.

Lung's towering form was starting to grow even larger thanks to Miss Militia's interference. What had once been a stable ten feet was now starting to reach more towards twelvish. His neck was starting to stretch into a more serpentine form as a row of spikes started to emerge down his spine. The man let out another victorious bellow as he reached out to climb the building once more.

 _What am I going to do,_ Boogeyman asked herself as the flaming inferno that was Lung's body grew even larger. She could leave now and abandon the field of battle, but that didn't sit right with her. With the size he had now, Lung could go on for several minutes even without direct conflict. He could go after some of the more populated sections of the city if he chose to in an effort to smoke her out. She wasn't going to let that happen.

And if she left now, that would be a victory for Lung. An affirmation that his power was sufficient to cow her into compliance and fear. That was something else that she would not allow. Nor could she allow Miss Militia to die on her watch. Even if she didn't respect the Protectorate anymore, that didn't mean she should throw them to the dogs like they had her. After all, Miss Militia was actually trying to do her job now, and she couldn't blame the woman for that. Even if she had chosen the most frustrating time to do it.

She was going to have to fight the man. At his current size trying to lead him somewhere else would be beyond risky. He would demolish everything in his path to get to her. So now, instead of breaking him down block by block, she was going to have to enter _his_ arena and challenge the man now that he had had some time to charge himself up.

This time Boogeyman could feel the building shake as Lung's claws plowed into the brick, using the holes as crude hand holds to pull himself up off the ground. She could hear the cracking of brick on brick and the faint groaning of wood as the building struggled to hold something that it had never been designed to.

The sound of gunshots rang out above the building's protests, and Boogeyman looked to see that Miss Militia had resumed her firing on Lung's form with a new gun. Each shot was a direct hit, which wasn't that surprising given Lung's size by now, but they did little to deter the man. They pierced his scales, but beyond that, the man didn't seem to care about them. They were little more than buzzing bees to him, irritating, but otherwise inconsequential. The ruined slugs popped out of his reforming flesh almost as quickly as they had entered, raining down on the ground and Lung continued his trek up the building without interruption.

 _Let's change that,_ Boogeyman thought as she slid off her steed's back. She gave the Nightmare a stroke before giving it an order to gather the others. Phobia snorted in compliance, moving off into the shadows to gather the other Nightmares. All the while Boogeyman gathered her black sand to form a spear that was as tall as she was. Barbed edges hooked out from the spear's insanely sharp tip. Try to tear this out and you would have to rip out your own flesh along with it.

"Going down," she muttered as she jumped off the rooftop. She could feel the wind against her skin as she plummeted towards Lung, spear in hand to skewer him. Her yellow eyes locked with Lung's blazing irises as she quickly closed the distance between the two of them. The flames that surrounded his form were intensely hot and would have given any normal human third-degree burns, but she was no ordinary human. That wasn't to say that they didn't hurt, but it was far less debilitating than it would be without powers. She let loose her spear once she was within arm's reach before cursing as her spear struck his neck, burying itself inside his jugular. She had been aiming for his face, but his now serpentine neck allowed him to twist out of her way.

But despite her miss, Lung howled as he moved to rip the spear out of his throat, falling to the ground once more as he lost his grip on the building. Boogeyman landed on her on her feet, cracking the ground beneath her. A sickening squelch filled her ears as Lung tore the spear, along with it a portion of his throat, free. Even as his own flesh dripped onto the ground the wound was already starting to close, a benefit of his regeneration.

"Fo'l," he growled out as crushed the spear into the tiny sand particulates that it was. Within moments there would be little evidence of her attack. Boogeyman formed a sand scythe in her hands even as Lung charged forward, claws outstretched. But for all of the man's size, his agility was far less impressive. Boogeyman jumped back out of his range, careful to avoid the inferno surrounding his body. She made a few passes at him with her scythe, drawing blood, but they might as well have been paper cuts for all the good it did her.

Suddenly, Lung twisted around, sweeping his huge tail around with the force of a wrecking ball. Though she didn't have time to get out of the way, Boogeyman managed to raise a quick wall of sand between her and the appendage. The wall didn't survive the hit, collapsing almost instantly. Boogeyman grunted as she was flung to the side like a ragdoll. She slammed into a building, cracking the bricks with the force of her impact.

Lung's laughter echoed down the street as he made for her stunned form, only to stop short as something explosive struck his back. The man howled in agony as chunks of flesh were seared from his form by the grenade. Blinking away her daze Boogeyman could see that Miss Militia had chosen an RPG as the form of her weapon.

 _Aim for the head,_ Boogeyman growled in the back of her mind towards the woman. Lung wasn't a villain that they could bring in by crippling him, his powers wouldn't allow it. Only by sheer overwhelming force would they be able to defeat him. And yet, Miss Militia seemed content to play by the "rules" for the murderer.

Though whatever she had to say about Miss Militia she wasn't one to flinch away from danger as Lung twisted around to bring the full weight of his power against her. He made it about two steps before a bolt of lightning struck him in the chest. Scales blackened as he was forced back by the bolt of an angry god. Boogeyman looked up to see Dauntless floating above the buildings, and what she had initially thought to be a lightning bolt was, in fact, his lance.

"Lung, stand down," he declared, earning a bellow of laughter from Lung as he spewed a thick stream of flame at the floating hero. The man dived out of the way with the speed of a falcon, moving in to pick Miss Militia up and carry her out of Lung's path. A red blur surrounded Lung's form, spinning in circles as if trying to create a tornado.

Velocity appeared to the side for a brief moment, drawing Lung's attention before increasing his speed to the point that nobody could hit him. Lung seemed to consider the red blur for a brief moment before turning his gaze back to her, dismissing the Breaker as a threat. Boogeyman called her black sand to her as Lung charged forward, fangs bared into an ugly sneer. With a wave of her hand, the summoned sand shot forward towards Lung's exposed face. The giant of a man raised his paw to block the attack, but the sand slipped through his hand as easily as air. Most of the sand vaporized once it came in contact with the fire, too small in amount to survive the heat, but that which did survive the inferno landed directly in Lung's eyes.

Boogeyman twisted the sand and felt a smile tug at her lips as Lung's pained howl filled the street again. Lung's hands reached to his now shredded, eyes, clawing to remove the invading substance from them. She could already feel what little sand was present starting to fade, so she pushed it even further, tearing all the way to the back of his eye socket. But even as she basked in her slight victory over the man, the sound of a canister hitting the ground caught her attention.

Boogeyman looked down to see a white and red can roll to her feet with the words PRT printed on the side. After making a sound that was most assuredly _not_ a yelp of surprise, she kicked the can towards Lung. Half a second later the canister went off, releasing its containment foam package. She didn't know how Lung could tell that it was heading towards him without his eyes, perhaps he heard it coming? In any case, Lung managed to avoid most of the still hardening containment foam.

But not all of it.

Lung roared as his right foot got stuck in the stuff, sealing him to the concrete. She could see his muscles straining against the foam with all the force that he could muster, but he might as well have been trying to tickle Behemoth into submission for all the good it did for him. Satisfied that Lung was contained for the moment, Boogeyman turned her attention towards the three Protectorate heroes who were trying to regroup. Growling in irritation Boogeyman jumped into the nearest shadow and emerged behind the group.

"What was that for?" she asked with an angry growl. The shocked squeal from Dauntless and Velocity were amusing, but she wasn't in the mood to savor such fear. Miss Militia, on the other hand, appeared unconcerned with her appearance, her hands not even instinctively tightening around her weapon. But there was a brief flash of fear as her gaze fell on the woman's gun and she shifted a bit so that it wasn't directly in her reach. Boogeyman held back a smile at the woman's reaction.

Someone was still a little shaken up with their meeting.

"Boogeyman, I suggest you stand down," Dauntless said in what she supposed was supposed to be a "heroic" voice. To her, it just sounded grating. The man's lance crackled menacingly as arcs of electricity ran up and down the pole, but Boogeyman didn't pay it any mind. She had more important things to worry about than a little electricity. Like, say, the giant rage dragon still trying to escape from his confinement.

"Perhaps you should focus on the larger threat at hand?" Boogeyman asked, gesturing to the struggling parahuman.

"Don't act like we're on the same side Boogeyman. You're a dangerous murderer and you _will_ be brought to justice," Dauntless said, his words dripping with unfounded certainty. Clearly, this was someone who had bought into the cool-aid that the Protectorate was selling.

"I prefer to think of myself as a problem solver," Boogeyman said with a shrug.

"By resorting to murder?" Dauntless asked, the sneer evident in his tone. His stance was tense, ready to move at a moment's notice, but there would be no way that he could get to her before she dropped into the shadow beneath her.

"If it solves the problem," Boogeyman said. She could practically hear the man's teeth grinding against each other as he prepared to strike her down.

"Before you do that, I'd consider that you'd have to fight me and Lung at the same time. And you don't have very good track records at either," she said. She could feel a small tremor of caution at the thought of facing both of them at once. There was little that Velocity could do to either of them other than being a distraction thanks to their Brute ratings, and Miss Militia had already demonstrated her lack of effectiveness against them both. Boogeyman supposed that if she used a really big gun she might be able to put her down, but that would still leave them with a very angry Lung. She had no idea how effective Dauntless would be against her, but she decided that voicing that opinion probably wouldn't be for the best.

For a moment, Dauntless hesitated, clearly conflicted on what he wanted to do.

"Dauntless, she's right, Lung's the bigger threat right now," Velocity said, drawing the man's attention to him.

"Lung is restrained," Dauntless said with certainty. As if the universe itself was listening in on them, a loud crack interrupted the conversation. All four of them looked over to Lung, who was busy hacking away at his own foot. His regeneration was working against him, but in a few seconds, he would be free, albeit missing a foot. His tail was now easily twice her length, and his neck half of that. His maw had enlarged to the point that it had more in common with a gaping pit than anything else. A pair of stubs were reaching out of his back, the first sign of his wings.

"Lung _was_ restrained," Boogeyman said in a tone drier than the desert.

Dauntless cursed, "That was my only containment foam grenade." The glare that he gave her through his Greek-like helmet clearly showed that he blamed her for that. Boogeyman just shrugged.

"I'm not the one who decided to try and foam the person who was trying to keep the giant rage dragon from demolishing the city," Boogeyman said with a scowl. She understood that she wasn't on the best of terms with the Protectorate, but trying to foam her with Lung right there? Was he that petty that he would risk his life and his comrade's lives to try and catch her instead of the bigger threat?

Dauntless looked less than enthused by her answer before turning to Miss Militia. "Where's your grenade?"

"I was confronted by Oni-Lee on the way here and had to use it to restrain him," she said. She didn't even bother glancing towards her partner, keeping her dark eyes firmly locked on Boogeyman's form. Now that she was closer to the woman, Boogeyman could see a few tears on her costume. She supposed that explained why she hadn't seen the serial suicide bomber at all. She had hoped that catching Lung off guard would have given her enough time to deal with him, but it looked like the ABB was a bit more battle ready than she anticipated.

"So, unless you have backup that can get here in the next ten seconds, I'd strongly suggest that you put aside whatever issues you have with me," Boogeyman said with an expressionless look on her face.

Dauntless looked like he wanted to push the issue, but Lung's howling was enough to make him reconsider. With an angry growl, Dauntless charged forward towards the parahuman as his foot started to reform far quicker than any natural regeneration would allow. She watched as his lance extended out, striking Lung's form as quickly as he could manage it without getting too close to those flames. Scales blackened and broke under the force of the lightning charged rod, but they were all mere flesh wounds.

"I don't suppose you have anything bigger than that," Boogeyman said with a nod towards Miss Militia's summoned gun. She could see the Blaster's face contort into a scowl as she glared down at her as if her mere existence offended the woman. She could feel the woman's desire to bring her to justice fight against her fear of allowing Lung to rampage. After a moment, her fear won out and she gave Boogeyman a tired sigh.

"Nothing that could put him down at this size without risk killing him," the heroine said with a regretful sigh. Boogeyman couldn't help but snort dismissively.

"You're really trying to keep him alive?" she asked, her face twisting into a sneer. Lung was a monster of the highest order, a man who willingly allowed his men to kidnap girls and force them into sexual servitude for his own profit.

"Unlike you, the Protectorate doesn't demand the death of all villains," Miss Militia said as she started to shift her weapon through various forms, apparently trying to think about an appropriate one to use. Boogeyman was far from a gun expert but any stretch of the imagination, but some of those she wouldn't want to be pointed at her, Brute rating or not.

"Only those that affect you personally?" Boogeyman asked with a mocking grin. She knew that Miss Militia had killed all of the men responsible for her village's destruction.

"Enough," Miss Militia said, her voice stronger than steel. Boogeyman flinched at the sheer unshakable will that the heroine was demonstrating in the face of the memory of the most traumatic event in her life. She felt like someone was ramming a spear through her heart. It was in a word – uncomfortable.

"If all you're going to do is hurdle insults at us, I _will_ detain you here and now. Either assist us or stand down," Miss Militia said, her resolve unbreakable. Boogeyman could tell that she had touched quite the never with the woman, but she was doing an admirable job at holding it back. And quite frankly she was right, insulting her gained her nothing. She was being petty while Lung's blazing form was howling behind them.

"Very well," Boogeyman said as she formed another scythe. She held back a wince as Velocity was nearly sent flying by one of Lung's massive claws, only missing him by mere millimeters. She was glad that Victoria wasn't here to join the battle because invincibility or not, an angry Lung was not someone you wanted to mess with. Hopefully, her mission was going a bit more according to plan.

* * *

Victoria grunted as she was flung back into a mailbox, denting the structure beyond repair. As Triumph charged her to close the distance she turned around and threw the metal container at him. She kept the throw weak so that it wouldn't actually hit him, but it was enough to make him end his charge. She felt a little bad about breaking public property like that, but he was the reason that it was broken in the first place.

She had tried to hide her super strength at first, but it was a little difficult to hide recovering from being blasted into a building. She had managed to keep her flight hidden, but only barely. It was incredibly hard to resist the urge to take to the skies to avoid attacks. She had a close call dodging one of his sonic blasts but managed to make it look like a result of her super strength rather than independent flight.

"You can't win," Triumph intoned as he marched forward without a trace of fear. His costume had a few scuff marks on it, but otherwise, he was unharmed.

"I'm not trying to win," Victoria said as she pulled herself up from the ground again. While her invulnerability gave her defense against the physical nature of Triumph's attack, her ears were still ringing from the sonic blast. Everything sounded so far away, like trying to listen to someone talking on the other end of a tunnel or having cotton candy stuck in her ears. "I'm _trying_ to leave, you idiot."

Honestly, the only reason she hadn't been captured yet was because the Nightmares were running interference on the PRT troopers, keeping them from lining up a clear shot against her. None of them were hurt aside from a few bruises, but it was starting to become harder to resist injuring them. She needed a way to disengage from this fight otherwise the outcome wouldn't be in her favor.

"This would be far easier if you just surrendered," Triumph noted as he dodged a rather large chunk of concrete being hurdled his way. Victoria rolled out of the way as he let loose another sonic blast in retaliation, utterly wrecking some poor sod's car parked behind her. The car alarm sparked for a moment before puttering out with a whimper.

 _This isn't working,_ Victoria thought as she kept a close eye on Triumph. Every time she tried to disengage from combat the man would blast her and her steed with another sonic attack. She could tell that he was trying to force her closer to the PRT building where she could be taken out at their leisure, but he wasn't having so much luck on that front either. He certainly was limiting her ability to move by destroying everything around her, but he hadn't quite managed to pin her down yet. She could end the stalemate by flying away and leaving the Blaster in the dust, but then the game would be up. As good as her costume was, she didn't think it would fool many people from putting two and two together.

She watched at Triumph's chest puffed in in preparation for another attack. This time, instead of trying to dodge it, she held her ground. Asphalt cracked as she quite latterly dug her feet into the ground, using them as anchors. When the sonic waves struck her form, she flinched as the initial physical punch knocked her back a little, but she managed to hold her ground. Her ears were ringing, but that was a minor concern, she could always have Ames heal her up later. Instead of letting up, Triumph doubled down on his sonic attack. Victoria felt another wave of pressure strike her form, but instead of allowing herself to be pushed back, she pushed _forward._

It was akin to trying to take a swim in molasses. Every step felt like an eternity as if their weight of the world was being pushed against her. But as she moved further and further down the tunnel of sound that Triumph was making, she could feel the difficulty of each step lessen. She couldn't see his face through his lion's helm, but she could see the way his arms were shaking as he struggled to keep up his attack. At the same time, Victoria knew that if managed to catch her with two quick waves of pressure then her shield wouldn't have time to recharge and she would have to be scraped off the ground.

They were both being pushed to their limits, and right now it was a race to see who would break first.

Victoria nearly fell flat on her face as the constant resistance she had been trying to fight through let out in a single instant. It was only her quick reflexes and a tiny use of her flight that prevented her from face planting onto the ground. Seeing that Triumph was trying to regain his breath Victoria charged forward and struck him in the chest before he could recover. The metal plate of his costume bent and warped with her punch, but not enough to hurt him. Besides, he had a healing factor, so it wasn't as if he would to _too_ injured.

In any case, Triumph went flying with a grunt, face planting into the ground. Satisfied that he wasn't moving, for the time being, Victoria let out a piercing whistle to call her Nightmares back. Or at least she hoped it was a piercing whistle, her hearing was still muffled thanks to Triumph's sonic roars.

At her signal, the Nightmares pulled back from their harassment of the PRT troopers. One who was cowering on the ground in an attempt to shield himself from the beasts looked quite relieved. She could see that they were all preparing to aim their sprayers at her, but none of them looked too eager to push her without cape back up.

"Do what you want with the spy, he's all yours," Victoria said as she mounted her steed. At least she thought it was her steed, it was a little hard to tell them all apart. They all looked like the same nightmarish figure to her eyes. Satisfied that she had done her job she pulled on her steed's reins, indicating that she wanted to take to the sky. The Nightmare obeyed without question, its hooves soundlessly moving against the open air as they were pulled higher and higher above the streets until the PRT troopers were nothing more than tiny specks.

The blonde parahuman let out a sigh as her hair whipped out in the wind, a cold breeze brushing up against her cheeks as she slumped in her seat. The fight with Triumph had been unwanted, but at the very least she finished her mission, if albeit bumpily.

"Come on, let's head back," Victoria said with a small sigh. She had hoped that her first mission for Boogeyman would have gone more smoothly than it did, but she knew all too well that things didn't always end up the way you wanted them too. As they coasted through the air, something caught Victoria's attention in the corner of her eye. A faint glow, like the ember of a fire. She couldn't make anything else out from this far except for the thick plume of smoke coming from the area. Her eyes narrowed behind her mask as he urged her steed to change course, sending them both straight towards the light.

 _Lung._

If she was right then Boogeyman needed her help. If she was wrong, well, she had always found asking for forgiveness easier than permission.

* * *

 _It could be worse,_ Boogeyman thought as they began another round with the man. They had managed to keep him contained on the street for now, but that was becoming more and more difficult. Velocity's movement had become more and more impeded by melting asphalt to the point where all he could do was circle the battle. Miss Militia was still trying to cripple Lung, a futile action if Boogeyman had ever seen one.

Even when her weapons penetrated the man's hide the damage they caused healed up too quickly to make any lasting impact. She could feel the woman's hesitance to call up more powerful weaponry in fear of killing Lung or making him stronger. Dauntless' lance had become little more than an irritant to Lung, shrugging off all but the most debilitating blows. Boogeyman was certain even with her assistance they wouldn't have been able to keep up as long as they had if Assault and Battery hadn't joined the fray.

The two capes worked as a well-oiled machine, using each other to further their position. They were the only two aside from her that were still making headway against the man. Battery's power allowed her to withstand the flames and strike at Lung, but only for the split seconds that her power remained charged. Assault was arguably the more powerful of the two, but the inferno surrounding Lung limited his involvement until she stepped in.

Using her sand, she temporarily snuffed out some of the flames surrounding the transformed gang leader, giving Assault time to move in. Lung reeled as the red costumed parahuman blurred at him, striking him with a force that could rival a cannonball. Lung howled as he was forced back a few steps, with Miss Militia taking out one of his knees and Dauntless striking at his eyes, two of his only weak points left.

Boogeyman joined in the assault, splitting her focus on keeping the flames smothered and directing another stream straight into Lung's chest. Millions of grains of black sand struck the man's form, their rough edges acting like miniature buzz saws. Alone the damage they did was so small as to not even be worth mentioning, but together?

Lung howled.

Boogeyman felt a smile cross her lips as Lung's roars of pain filled her ears. Right up until everything went wrong. Lung's howls of pain turned into rage as he burst through the sand with a torrent of flame. Assault and Battery flinched back at the sudden charge even as Lung leaped for Dauntless. It looked like the man was too high for Lung to hit, but Taylor watched as Lung spread his still nascent wings. They were still too small for him to fly, but big enough to give him an extra boost. The draconian man's huge paw swept up and struck Dauntless from the sky. She could see the man's shield laden arm blur up as tendrils of energy swept out from the disk in an effort to shield himself from the blow. There was a bright flash as the shield took the brunt of the blow, but the force of the impact was so great that Dauntless was knocked straight from the sky. The spike of fear and concern from everyone was overshadowed by the overwhelming terror from Dauntless. The man's unprotected back struck the ground with a crack. His weapons laid at his side, but he looked far too stunned to make use of them.

She could still feel his emotions, which mean that he was alive, but she wasn't sure how long that would last with Lung's presence. Lung had nearly put her through the wall earlier and he was far stronger now than then, even with his shield protecting him. She couldn't make out what was being said by the red speedster as it was drowned out by Lung's triumphant roar. She could feel the man's concern and fear rolling off him in waves as he picked up his comrade and started to pull him out from the battlefield.

"It took you this long to take one of us down? No wonder you never come out to fight," Boogeyman taunted. Lung's eyes, which had now multiplied into six, narrowed with in anger. She could feel the rage rolling off the man as if he were a small star. Idly she wondered if his powers were increasing his capacity for rage.

"Y'r n'xt," he growled, the threat clear even with his mangled speech. Even with her taunt, she could see that his wings were still growing. In a few minutes, he would be able to fly, and any attempt to contain him would be utterly wasted. Time was on Lung's side. All he had to do was wait them out long enough for his power to grow even more and they would be dead.

Boogeyman grinned as she felt some familiar faces brushed up on the edge of her awareness. Lung wasn't the only one stalling for time. Even with Lung's flames lighting up the street like a demented bonfire the surroundings seemed to darken and chill. A cold breeze swept over the battlefield, a cold claw of dread squeezing the very hearts of the combatants. Even in his rage Lung seemed to realize that something was off, pausing his rampage to glare around for the source of the disturbance.

Boogeyman could feel the Protectorate parahuman's heart rates spike as a black shadow fell over them. Lung, realizing that everyone was looking at something behind him, turned around to face the disturbance. He too couldn't help but gape at the mass of shadows and sand. It stood as a towering monolith of darkness. Yellow eyes flickered in and out of the front of the collected mass as almost every Nightmare she had created fought over the best positions. Despite himself, Lung took a step back as his neck craned up to search for the top of the pillar of sand which stood over three times his own height.

But only for a moment.

Lung twisted around to face her, eyes blazing with an unquenchable anger as he charged forward, intending on ending this once and for all. Boogeyman only smiled as the draconian titan bore down on her like an avalanche, an unstoppable force of death. Even as Lung's clawed hands stretched out to rip her to pieces she only smiled.

"You're going to _choke_ on your fears, Kenta."

The pillar of Nightmares had been held aloft because of her will, and in a single instant, it all came crashing down. The tide of darkness swept over the street, burying everything in its path. Telephone poles and scraped cars were helplessly caught in its wake as it smashed into the enraged gang leader. Lung's howls of rage became even more incensed as he was swallowed up by the mass of sand and darkness. Boogeyman dove in after the man, the forms of her Nightmares feeling more like a comforting blanket than anything. She took to the howling mass like a fish in water.

She could feel Lung's desperation hit a fever pitch as he tried to escape the mass, but his flames were being smothered out with ease and without a visual landmark, he was hopelessly lost. She could feel her Nightmares pounding against his armor, searching for a weak point. It was like trying to crack a lobster. Difficult, but not impossible. Boogeyman slammed her fingers into Lung's scaled back and pulled. She could feel her Nightmares joining her, trying to get past the thick outer layer and into the juicy center. With a final grunt, she managed to make a hole in the man's defenses, allowing her Nightmares to swarm the man. Scales were shredded and flesh torn asunder as her Nightmares savaged the man like a pack of piranhas. But despite all that, Lung continued to fight on, striking out wildly, destroying scores of Nightmares with mere swipes. For a brief moment, he actually managed to break free of the swarming mass.

Her herd had done a number on him, with the pale white of bone shining through on multiple points of his body. Half of his eyes were a mangled mess, and gut was almost pouring out of his insides. She could see that his healing factor was taking care of the damage, but with it being divided between so many injuries, it was slowing down. Still well beyond natural healing rates, but not as fast as it had been before.

Lung made it about a foot out of the swirling mass before an explosion rocked his torso. Lung howled as the RPcourtesyesy of Miss Militia, detonated against his mass, interrupting his tandem and giving her Nightmares time to swarm him again. With a wave of her hands, Boogeyman had some of her Nightmares travel down his gaping maw, smothering out any nascent flames and churning through his insides like a blender.

"This is how your story ends, Kenta," Boogeyman whispered into his still intact ear, only just barely audible above the endless gnashing of teeth and sand. She dodged a rather pathetic swipe from Lung before resuming her speech. "You die how you were born, alone and afraid. You have no friends coming to help you, no support to assist you. You're going to die here and now."

She could feel the man's lung pop like bubbles as she twisted her sand inside of him. His healing factor was desperately trying to heal him, but it appeared even it had its limits. Each second inside the cloud of Nightmares only added to what it needed to repair, and none of it was superficial. Stomach acid rained down on his insides as it was ripped apart by a set of jaws. Every part of his body was on fire and his healing had nearly slowed down to a crawl.

"And in the end, all your power is for naught. When faced with a challenger that can match you, you will always fail and fall. Take that to your grave," Boogeyman hissed as the man's throat was torn to shreds. The once proud gang leader fell to the ground, hands clutching his throat reflexively as he gasped for air.

She could tell that the man was near the end of this line. A minute more of this and he would be dead. She could hear the shouts of the Protectorate parahumans demanding that she cease her attack She snorted. If they thought she was going to let Lung walk away from this they were sorely mistaken. This wasn't quite the end she had intended for the man, but it would still serve its purpose.

"Goodbye, Ken-"

She felt, _something_ , but she couldn't even begin to describe what it was. It was like an echo of a brain freeze at the edge of her awareness. It was a feeling that she quickly brushed aside. The other parahumans though? She felt them collapse to the ground like puppets who had their strings cut. Even Lung slumped down for a brief moment as if he were about to fall unconscious when his mind suddenly snapped back into awareness.

And then everything exploded in a sea of silver and scales.

* * *

Everyone assumed that Lung was a mad beast. An unthinking thug who had gotten lucky in the superpower lottery and had the cruelty and viciousness to back it up.

In a sense, they weren't wrong.

He was prone to rage when insulted, but when all that one had left was his own pride, did it not make sense to defend it with all you had? Who could fault him for wishing to defend his honor, with what little he had left?

He had once been a reckless youth, drunk on his own power. He had been that beast then, taking what he could and giving nothing in return. He had needed no one after the death of his friends and his subsequent Trigger, for he had power. There had been to subtly or thought in his actions, only a mindless rage that could only be quenched with the suffering of others.

It had not been until Leviathan rose from the waves to challenge him that he learned humility. For all that people praised him for driving off the beast he knew it was a farce. The wave-maker left because it had chosen to, not because of anything he had done. His power had driven him to heights he had never before reached, to the point where even the Triumvirate could not remain in his presence.

And still, it was all for nothing.

His homeland had been decimated and all that he had was taken from him once more. He had been lost in the wake of Leviathan, uncertain as to what to do with his life.

The Yàngbǎn had tried made that purpose clear. They had chased him all across Japan until they caught him off guard in his sleep. They caged him like an animal and treated him as one. They resorted to every trick in the book to break him.

He tried to escape at first, raging against the walls with all his might, but it had accomplished naught. For every trick that he had, they possessed a dozen more. They were Legion, and he was but one.

It was there in that hell that he learned patience.

He let his captors believe that they had broken him, hiding that spark of self from their gaze. It had taken all of his willpower not to crack, but after two years of being held captive, he managed to escape. They did not survive pursuing him after.

He had experienced three great losses. He would not experience another.

Brockton Bay had been the perfect place to set himself up. The swarms of displaced immigrants from the fall of Japan had all been too easy to gather together. Uniting the other Asian gangs had been difficult with how much they hated each other, but after killing off all their parahumans they bent to his will. Oni-Lee had been the only one to survive his wrath, the only one to realize that he could not be defeated.

While he could never replace what he had lost, Brockton Bay could fill the void. He cared little where his money and stuff came from in the end, so long as he could have it to himself. His peons could do what they want so long as they obeyed his will. Jennifer Lin had yet to learn that lesson. Her rebellion had been brief, though he did have to give her credit for how far she had been willing to go. He had been tempted to kill her right then and there, regardless of his respect for her willingness to fight, but he had not spent too much effort getting her to Brockton Bay just to kill her when she behaved like a spoiled child. It was not her fault, she had not experienced true loss yet, and the bombs that she made were well worth the time he had put into recruiting her.

Hopefully, the loss of her tongue would change her mind. It wouldn't do for him to have to damage his pet Tinker too much while he tried to train her. It had been amusing to watch her face collapse as she realized he knew about her conversation with Boogeyman.

 _Boogeyman._

Some of the fools believed her to be a Kami, come down to punish them for their transgressions. They were idiots, for if there were Kami, they had abandoned them long ago to Leviathan. No, Boogeyman was nothing more than a child with power, lashing out at everything around her. Not unlike he had been so long ago.

He had promised himself to repay her for her insults to him on the video, but her assault on the Empire had been amusing. He had laughed for ten minutes after Kaiser's death, cut down in front of his own army like the mongrel that he was. He had been content to let her exist for a time, at least until the Empire was dead and gone and this city was _his._ He held back his rage so that her assaults on the Empire would continue, giving Bakuda more time to create her little bombs. With over half of the Empire's roster dead, captured, or gone, it would have only been a matter of time before they fell to him and his superior firepower.

 _Then_ he would repay her back tenfold for all her grievances. And then she would learn what fear really was.

But her stunt had stoked his anger like nothing ever had before. He had long tried to shove the woman in the suit out of his mind, to bury her underneath the weight of his memories. The moment he realized what Boogeyman had done he knew that she wasn't going to walk away from this alive. He would skin her bones and put her corpse up on display after he was done with her, assuming that there was anything left to begin with. Nothing else had mattered, not his men, or his gang or anything else.

She would die for that transgression.

But now, here he was, choking to death once more because he had allowed his rage to control him. He could feel his insides bursting apart as the demons entered his maw. He tried to close it, but his mouth was far too large for that now. Her insidious voice whispered to him, the seeds of doubt that she had been sowing finally coming to fruition. For all his power and influence, he was going to die, choking to death as he had all those years ago.

"Goodbye, Ken-"

The world _broke_.

 _Error._

 _Conflict._

 _Intercession?_

 _Agreement._

 _Activation._

* * *

 **Oops. Looks like Boogeyman pushed him a bit too far.**

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	29. Nightmare 4-a

**Hey everyone, I've been putting off uploading this because trying to format on this site is like trying to pull teeth. Especially coming from Spacebattles where they allow much more creativity in the formatting. I've done the best I can, but trying to replicate what I have over there is proving to be impossible. Hopefully, I've managed to make the chapter clear, but just in case-**

 _Italics_ **are either thought, Lisa's power, video clips, or a flashback depending on the situation.**

Underline **is Shard speak, and not audible to the characters.**

 **Hopefully, this chapter is understandable, but if you find it difficult go to Spacebattles to get a better version.**

 **Special thanks to** Commissar Carnifex **for taking the time to beta this chapter.**

 **Enjoy!**

Nightmare 4.a

Sometimes Lisa wondered if her powers were worth it. Ever since she had gotten them they had given her nothing but trouble and pain. Her own parents locked her away so that they could use her as a personal Oracle to create a fortune for themselves. Even after escaping their grip and wandering around the state she found herself in almost the exact same position again, except this time the person holding the lease was far more dangerous than a pair of greedy parents.

Coil was a sociopath of the highest order. Everything that he did was for his own benefit and his alone. He claimed he wanted to save the city, but he was more concerned about it not failing simply because he lived in it, not out of any desire to see the general public's lives improved. As far as he was concerned they were all peons and tools for him to wield when needed. He would gladly kill a dozen children if it meant getting to his eventual goal of ruling the city.

The mere thought of a sociopath like Coil being in charge of the city was terrifying enough to send shivers down Lisa's spine. The fact that she was being forced to help him in his endeavors grated on her nerves like nothing else. If it wasn't for the fact that he was holding a gun to her head and that every escape attempt on her part was met with failure she would be long gone by now.

On the other hand, it was almost a blessing that Coil had found her instead of another group. Oh, she still hated the man with the passion of a thousand suns for humiliating and threatening her, but at the very least he hadn't locked her away and drugged her up like so many other groups would have. He was willing to give her enough leash to do his dirty work as an Undersider instead of being his own personal oracle. He was giving her just enough freedom that she could work against him in secret.

She was certain that he knew she was working against him, which was why she had been extremely careful in tracking down his bank accounts. She had the bank isolated, but she couldn't get what she needed without getting into the actual bank. She could possibly infiltrate the bank on her own, but she would need to do it at a time that she knew that Coil would be distracted.

Easier said than done since she still hadn't been able to figure out what his powers were. She had narrowed it down to some form of precognition, but that was still a rather wide range of powers. The fact that he was so subtle in his use that the PRT didn't even know if he was a parahuman or not didn't help matters at all. He had claimed that he could control destiny, but if he could really do that there would be no need for him to sit on his butt and let a group of teenagers do his dirty work for him. He could be running the city right now if he really did have some form of probability manipulation. So, it was something limited and not foolproof, because she had found more than one incident report in the PRT databanks that he had given her access to detailing some instances of Coil's men being forced to retreat. Dangerous yes, but not unbeatable.

Even so, that wasn't her concern right now. Especially not since she had gotten that little phone call from Coil.

* * *

"Ms. Livsey," Coil's voice said over the phone, just enough modulation to prevent her from getting too much off of him.

Much, but not all.

 _Trying to feign confidence._

 _Interesting_ , Lisa thought even as she tried to ignore Coil's slight jab. The man always liked to keep her off balance with mentions of the former life that she had shed after…well, everything. Still, the fact that he wasn't as confident and smug as he usually was indicated some form of weakness. Was this something that she could exploit?

"I have an assignment for you," he said, his words cold and measured. There was a muffled noise on the other end of the line, one that she couldn't quite make out.

 _Angry. Discomforted. Being forced to move ahead of schedule. Third party involvement._

A third party? And one that was apparently powerful enough to tweak Coil's nose? Perhaps she could cozy up to them and get her out of this situation. If she proved her usefulness it might be worth her while to look into other employment opportunities.

 _Coil is frightened of a third party. Fears that third party will kill him._

A third party capable of making a seemingly unbeatable sociopath afraid? Perhaps she should leave them be for now. She wanted to get out of a life-threatening situation, not put herself into another, _more_ dangerous one.

"Sure boss, what do ya need?" Lisa asked in an irritatingly chipper attitude. She knew that talking like this over the phone frustrated Coil, as made evident by the almost near indistinguishable sigh of irritation on the other end of the line.

"I need you to look into Boogeyman for me," he said in a strangely flat tone with undercurrents of anger. Previous experience had told her that he should have put her down after a display like that, making some sort of comment about her childish attitude or the like. The fact that he hadn't only demonstrated how important this really was to him. He wasn't going to waste his time with petty remarks, not when he wasn't entirely sure about his own safety.

 _Nervous. Nervous about third party. Nervous about Boogeyman._

 _Oh, what's this?_

Latching onto that little tidbit, Lisa stretched her power. She would get a headache later, but anything that she could use against Coil would be well worth some discomfort in the long run.

 _Nervous about confronting Boogeyman. Doesn't feel confident in his powers. Boogeyman can interfere with his powers._

Lisa tried to keep her breath from hitching at the information that her power had just given her. She had read the report that Coil had given her that Boogeyman had been capable of interfering with Miss Militia's powers, but the fact that she could interfere with Coil's powers was news. It certainly explained why he had been behaving somewhat erratically these last few days, with longer periods of silence between contacts than normal. If something interfered with her powers she would freak out too.

Still, this was a point of weakness that she could use if she was careful enough.

"I dunno boss, Boogeyman's getting a bit too hot for a group of small timers like us to get involved with," Lisa said with just the right amount of hesitation to make the man believe her. The best part was that she wasn't exactly lying either. The Undersiders, as they had chosen to call themselves, were still very much a small-time group. They hadn't had any major scores that could put them on the map, still remaining under most organization's radar.

And quite frankly, claiming that Boogeyman was a hot subject right now was quite the understatement. She was pretty much who everyone was talking about in Brockton Bay right now. New capes weren't rare, but capes as powerful as Boogeyman and a willingness to break the rules? That was far rarer.

Not that Lisa herself particularly cared about the rules, but breaking them and being found out typically meant lots of people coming down on your head. Contrary to what Brian liked to believe, not everyone played by the same rules, as made evident by her little arraignment with Coil. The irony was that the rules, where were meant to protect the unsupported and isolated capes typically didn't help them. It was the larger groups like the Empire that reaped the rewards because they had the strength to back themselves up. Boogeyman appeared to be wily and powerful enough to avoid those repercussions so far, but she wouldn't want to be near the girl once those came crashing down on her.

Still, if Boogeyman _could_ affect Coil's power, it would be well worth her time to look into, even if she wasn't being ordered to. But there was no reason to let Coil know that right now.

"I will see to it that you're compensated," he said flatly, though she could hear the faint gnashing of teeth.

 _Doesn't like this deal. Third party forcing him to take the deal. Would rather use alternative methods to get information from you._

Lisa gulped a bit. She had a fair idea on what those "alternative methods" might be. Which she supposed really highlighted how off-balance Coil was. He wouldn't risk damaging one of his tools unless he was certain it would benefit him in the long run. And as much as it rankled her to call herself a "tool", she would rather be a useful tool that he needed alive and intact rather than a dead one.

"Five thousand," Lisa rattled off, trying to hide her unease. Compared to what she knew that Coil had in his illegal accounts it was a drop in the bucket but compared to the measly amount that he was paying them monthly it was enough of a demand to avoid suspicion. She didn't want him to realize that she was giving in too quickly if she didn't try to negotiate.

"Very well. I'll see to it that any work-related expenses are taken care of as well. Do _not_ fail me, Ms. Livsey," Coil warned, a hint of dark promise lurking underneath his voice. The fact that he was willing to give into her demands that easily really showed how serious this was to him.

 _Irritated. Doesn't want to pay that much. Being forced to pay you that much. Third party intervention._

"Can do boss-man," Lisa with a cheery smile that she was certain would get under Coil's skin. The sharp hiss and the quick shut down of the phone line was a delight to her. It was always nice when she got the last words in. Hopefully Coil would remain off balance for some time while she gathered her resources, but first, she had to look into Boogeyman. Coil had not been making an idle threat about her failing.

 _Needs results. Will retaliate if he does not get results._

Lisa didn't need a Thinker rating to know that would be very bad for her.

 _No pressure then,_ Lisa thought only somewhat sardonically as a full body shiver hit her. Some of the things that she knew that Coil would be okay with doing was disturbing, even for a supervillain.

 _Let's get to work._

After scouring the PHO boards for a time, she had to wonder if being punished by Coil might be the better option. The mindless yammering on the boards was giving her a headache from all the idiocy. How did some of these people live?

Unfortunately for the young Thinker, it was the best way for her to find information on Boogeyman. Her usual method of information gathering by scouring through the PRT databases had been severely hampered due to the recent security sweeps the organization was conducting; leaving this the only option she had left.

 _Joy._

* * *

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 **Topic: A New Cape?  
In: Boards ► News ► Events ► Brockton Bay  
Ekul**(Original Poster)  
Posted On Feb 16th, 2011:  
Hey, does anyone know what was happening last night? I heard something that sounded like a tank, but I didn't want to go outside to see what it was. I know the Merchants sometimes use the abandoned warehouses in the area, did they have anything to do with it?

 **(Showing page 1 of 2)**

 **►Aloha**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
Are you sure you weren't just drunk?

 **►Answer Key**  
Replied On Feb 16st, 2011:  
Aloha Let's not be rude. I heard that something went down by the old warehouses too.

 **►Reave** (Verified PRT Agent)  
Replied On Feb 1th, 2011:  
I heard from the boys working that night that apparently some new cape made their debut by taking down the Merchants.

It's unconfirmed at the moment, but we believe that they killed both Skidmark and Squealer and were responsible for Mush's hospitalization.

 **►Char**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
Wait, aren't those guys basically all of the Merchant capes? Do you mean to tell me that one cape took out what basically amounts to an entire gang?

 **►Aloha**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
I'm calling BS. There's no way that one newbie cape did all that.

 **►bothad**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
Wait, so doesn't this mean that the Merchants are basically done?

 **►Aloha**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
bothad Weren't you listening to me? This is obviously a scam of some kind.

 **►BadSamurai**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
Aloha Yes, an official PRT agent released information on a fake cape attack to scam us. Truely thou are a genius.

 **►Aloha**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
-POST DELETED-

 **►Brilliger** (Moderator: Protectorate Main)  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
Please avoid threatening other users like that Aloha, otherwise, you could be looking at a ban.

 **►Coyote-C**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
Well, that's one way to make a debut to the cape scene.

 **►Mr. Muscles** (Unverified Cape)  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
Tell me about it. All I did was bust up a few druggies at the start. But compared to dismantling a gang that's nothing.

 **►Aloha**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
Okay, now that I've calmed down and watched the video I'd like to say I told you so.

 **►Answer Key**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
What are you talking about?

 **►Aloha**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
Answer Key What do you mean what am I talking about? You can clearly see that there isn't any cape in the video. This footage has obviously been faked by the PRT.

 **►Chaosfaith**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
*Looks at video*  
I don't know what you're smoking Aloha but I want some.  
You can clearly see tall dark and scary and her little equine pets, or are you just blind?

 **►Aloha**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
Chaosfaith What are you talking about? There's nobody there! Those Merchants are probably all actors.

 **►Logs**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
Aloha Don't know what you're talking about dude, shadow girl looks pretty legit to me.

So what are we looking at here? Some kind of Master parahuman.

 **►Aloha**  
Replied On Feb 16th, 2011:  
There is no cape!

 **End of Page. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…8**

 _Believes what he is saying. Doesn't see any cape there._

 _Thank you, power,_ Lisa thought rather sarcastically as she scrolled through the PHO forum. As if that tidbit of information wasn't obvious as they argued about it for the next three pages before a mod finally stepped in to resolve the issue. Still, it was an interesting little nugget of information about the new cape.

 _A selective Stranger power?_ Lisa considered, mulling over the possibility. There were certainly odder things that had happened than a Stranger power that only affect select portions of the population. Aloha was far from the only one to claim that they didn't see anything judging by a quick scroll through the forum.

 _The number of people that cannot see Boogeyman is decreasing._

Interesting. Did that mean that the power was something temporary that Boogeyman could set up for when she wanted privacy, and it just faded away after some time? Lisa tried focusing her powers on digging out the secrets of Boogeyman's abilities, though she knew that she would get the same answer that she had been getting since she started.

 _Boogeyman using minions. Boogeyman scaring individuals._

 _Abilities Unknown._

 _Not a parahuman._

 _Obviously,_ Lisa thought with a slight snarl as her hands tightened around her mouse. She had been getting the same generic responses all week when she turned her gaze to try and decipher the new cape's abilities. It wasn't a block like some Trumps could generate, but rather her power simply couldn't expand beyond what she was being shown. As if her powers couldn't even begin to guess how she was doing what she was doing. All she got was some basic information that a child could put together.

It was…irritating.

Oh, it had been amusing and gratifying to hear the Coil's power was apparently malfunctioning, to know that smug snake wasn't so smug anymore, but that did little to alleviate her own irritation with the situation. Coil wanted answers soon. At this point, _she_ wanted answers soon, if only so that she could actually get something on the girl.

Really, the girl's powers were a secondary concern since she already had access to the PRT report on her abilities. At this point she was putting so much focus on them simply because she wanted to try and work around whatever Trump ability was shielding her from Thinker view. Trying to find stuff on the girl's civilian identity was far easier given that she had practically blasted it out to the world.

Not that she had admitted it in so many words, but her actions with Shadow Stalker practically pointed an arrow directly to her true identity. Lisa pulled up the video again on a different tab. It had been banned from PHO but a few copies were still floating around the internet.

 _"So, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Shadow Stalker is a very naughty little girl. It seems that she's been tormenting her classmates in her civilian identity as Sophia Hess. And I'm not just talking about name calling or anything juvenile like that, though she still does to that. No, I'm talking about shoving a classmate into a locker that's filled with nothing but used feminine products and other garbage and leaving her in there for hours. All for her own amusement._

 _Some of you are probably getting pretty upset right now. I know I was, but that's not what really gets my blood boiling. Do you want to know what really gets me? The school, Winslow, did absolutely nothing to stop her. In fact, they pretty much ignored what she was doing because it was easier for them than having to take care of a girl that nobody cared about. Her PRT handler covered up what was going on at the school because it was too much effort for her to actually do her job. And doesn't that really demonstrate the way the city works? So long as you're powerful, nobody will stop what you're doing, and if you're weak and useless nobody will give a damn about you."_

Lisa could only wince as the sheer hatred that coated every word in the girl's speech.

 _Boogeyman knew Shadow Stalker. Boogeyman didn't like Shadow Stalker. Boogeyman hated Shadow Stalker. Boogeyman had a negative relationship with Shadow Stalker. Boogeyman was bullied by Shadow Stalker._

 _Yeah, I get it power,_ Lisa groused as she rubbed her forehead. She could understand if Boogeyman had brought up some of Shadow Stalker's kills or other unconfirmed rumors first, which in all honesty might have been even more damaging to the Protectorate's reputation. But to bring up a bullying campaign? No matter how horrible, and her power assured her it was just as horrible as she thought it was, it was just too out of place given her other actions. She had taken down the Merchants in one fell swoop, a group of thugs who had ruined far more lives than Shadow Stalker ever had, and then turned around and dealt with a school yard bully?

No, this was far too personal to be anything else.

A quick search had revealed everything that she needed to know about Taylor Hebert, also known by her moniker Boogeyman. It was really quite amazing what you could find on the internet if you looked hard enough, even without a Thinker power. Digging up a teenage girl's life? Child's play to a Thinker like her.

If she couldn't beat the powers then she would beat the parahuman.

Within an hour she had everything that she could ever want on Taylor Hebert's civilian identity. Her mother had died a few years ago in a car crash, sad but uninteresting. Her father, on the other hand, had died pretty recently. He was also listed as a car crash victim, but the police report that she had found revealed that he had been heavily under the influence at the time. His death apparently coincided with the girl's disappearance and missing person report that had been filed away. It was obvious that the police hadn't put that much effort into finding her, runaways typically didn't do that well in Brockton Bay.

 _Father was drunk because of missing child. Father did not wish to live without child. Father committed—_

Lisa cut that line of inquiry off so quickly that she could practically feel the mental whiplash. She didn't need to see something like that laid bare before her. It was akin to taking Rex's corpse and dangling it in front of her. She had always had a bit of a soft spot for people with suicidal tendencies given her past, but there wasn't anything that she could do here. The man was already dead and it looked more and more like Taylor could have had a psychotic break as a result. Everything that Boogeyman was doing was so far out of Taylor's normal profile it wasn't even funny. She might have considered it the girl's trigger event, but she disappeared about a week before her father's suicide, right in conjunction with a police investigation at Winslow.

She brought up the report, which specifically mentioned Taylor Hebert's name. Even though she was a villain and hardly a paragon of virtue, she had to admit that being locked inside a locker filled with biological contaminants was pretty nasty. It was all but a confirmation of Taylor's identity as Boogeyman seeing that she hadn't been seen since and had been presumed dead by the police.

 _Triggered in locker._

Lisa winced a little bit. Triggers weren't things that people liked to bring up, even when it wasn't their own. It was the moment that all parahumans broke, leaving behind damaged people in their wake. And it seemed that this Trigger in conjunction with her father's death had broken Boogeyman a little too much.

All of this was informative, but there wasn't really much leverage for her to go on. No close living family members and the police report described her as a loner and social outcast. There was nothing there that she could use on the girl. She supposed she could bring up her dead father, but trying to use a suicide victim like that made the bile rise up in her throat. She couldn't do that to anyone.

Seeing that investigating the life of Taylor Hebert wasn't getting her anywhere Lisa turned her attention back to Boogeyman. There had to be _something_ that she could use against the girl as leverage. It didn't even have to be life threatening, all she needed was something that she could use to convince her to join her side for a time. All she needed was for Coil's power to remain on the fritz long enough for her to take over his holdings and men.

That was always the problem with buying loyalty with money. The loyalty only lasted until someone paid more than you.

She had already identified the men most willing to join her, but she needed that cash from Coil's accounts to move any further. Which brought her back to Boogeyman's ability to interfere with Thinker powers.

She pulled up another page from the dredges of PHO, this one more oriented into an examination of Boogeyman herself. The PHO thread that had risen in the direct aftermath of her little video had been closed down by the authority of the mods once they figured out what was going on, but there was still quite a bit of speculation left to go around.

 **Topic: Shadow Stalker Unmasked  
In: Boards ► News ► Capes ► Brockton Bay  
Forgotten Creator**(Original Poster)  
Posted On Feb 21st, 2011:  
As of this morning, Shadow Stalker's identity has become public knowledge.

I'm not going to reveal it here for fear of risking the wrath of the mods, but if you google Shadow Stalker or Boogeyman it should be one of the first things to come up.

A video was released by Boogeyman of her chasing Shadow Stalker through the city for an entire night. According to the new cape, Shadow Stalker had been abusing her power as a Ward in her civilian identity as Winslow. Boogeyman claims that she shoved a classmate into a locker filled with what can only be described as toxic sludge. The staff apparently did nothing to stop this.

Normally I would have just thought this to be some form of elaborate lie on part of the villain, but all the evidence that's been compiled is far too compelling to ignore.

 **(Showing page 1 of 12)**

 **►Bruce Lao**  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
There's no way a Ward did that. Did Shadow Stalker help deliver an anti-bullying lecture a month or two ago when she first joined the Wards?

 **►Xyloloup**  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
You better believe it, I went to school with [DELETED]. She treated everyone like complete and utter garbage. I heard that she had stuffed someone into a locker, but I thought it was just one of those silly rumors.

 **►Noveltry**  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
Even if she did actually do that, I don't really think this is a good response. Boogeyman should have gone to the PRT first.

 **►Space Zombie**  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
Didn't you see what she posted? [DELTEDED]'s PRT agent knew what was going on and did nothing. Why should Boogeyman have trusted the PRT? Especially since she's right, what have the Protectorate and PRT done recently regarding the gangs?

 **►Chilldrizzle**  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
They captured Hookwolf a few weeks ago.

 **►Space Zombie**  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
Yeah, and then he escaped a day later. In one-night Boogeyman ended one of the gangs. She's one individual compared to the organization of the Protectorate and PRT. Why didn't they do anything like that?

 **►TheGnat**  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
While I can't condone her treatment of Shadow Stalker, I have to agree that she does make some good points. While the city has gotten marginally better over the years (with the Teeth not kidnapping people off the street for their fight pits) its still far from ideal. There are far too many villains out in the city right now with the freedom to act as they want to.

 **►Noveltry**  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
So we're just supposed to accept that a cape can go up and kill/torture individuals based on how they feel about them? If that doesn't sound like a recipe for a disaster I don't know what does.

 **►Space Zombie**  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
I'm not saying I want her to kill every criminal, but I would much rather prefer them dead over me.

 **►Coyote-C**  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
Man, that was brutal. Does she have some sort of Thinker or Master rating regarding her speech, because I'm getting shivers just listening to that.

 **►Bagrat** (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
Congrats on beating me to the punch Forgotten Creator, usually I'm the one to post these.

Coyote-C I'm still waiting to hear from my PRT contacts, but I don't think it's a Master power, I think she's just that scary. I know I would be scared if I was confronted by a herd of murder horses like that.

 **►Good Ship Morpheus**  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
All hail our lady of darkness!

 **►XxVoid_CowboyxX**  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
[DELETED] is Shadow Stalker! No way, I go to school with her, do you think she'll let me get an autograph?

 **►Iblis**  
Replied On Feb 21st, 2011:  
...Really Cowboy?

On a more serious note, does anyone have a clear idea of what her powers are?

 **End of Page. 1,** **2** **,** **3** **...** **10** **,** **11** **,** **12**

 **(Showing page 12 of 12)**

 **►Brilliger** (Moderator: Protectorate Main)  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
As of this moment, this thread is locked.

Further discussion regarding Boogeyman can be directed to her new thread.

LINK.

 **End of Page.** **1** **,** **2** **,** **3** **,** **4** **...** **10** **,** **11** **, 12**

 **Topic: Official Boogeyman Thread  
In: Boards ► News ► Capes ► Brockton Bay  
Bagrat**(Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)  
Posted On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
As I'm sure most of you are aware by now, Brockton Bay has a new cape to add to its ever growing roster. (Seriously, the number of capes that live here is ridiculous).

Love her or hate her Boogeyman has been making quite the impact on the local criminal cape community.

IMPORTANT! I've been asked by the mods to inform you all that while discussing Shadow Stalker's apparent actions is alright, we shouldn't go digging into her civilian identity if only to give her family some peace.

Thanks to some of my contacts inside the PRT, I've managed to get a look at Boogeyman's current threat ratings.  
Master 6-8  
Brute 4  
Mover 4  
Thinker 4 (Unconfirmed)  
Shaker/Blaster 4  
Trump 3 (Unconfirmed)  
Edit: Stranger ? (Unconfirmed)

That's quite a spread for one cape. I guess the villains of Brockton Bay better watch out.

 **(Showing page 1 of 25)**

 **►Mr. Muscles** (Unverified Cape)  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
I think I'm getting power envy. I mean seriously, that's a huge variety of powers. Even if they aren't top tier level the fact that she can use them all at once and build them up off each other represents a huge threat to anyone fighting her.

 **►White Fairy** (Veteran Member)  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
I'm more concerned about her action rather than her powers. I mean, taking down a gang was alright and all, but I don't think she should have killed them.

 **►Morgan Sinister**  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
The Merchants were scum of the highest order, they deserved to be put down like the rabid dogs that they were. I've seen far too many kids get swept up in their little gang.

 **►Deadman**  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
I'm still trying to figure out what her theme is exactly. I mean, all capes have a theme of some sort to their powers, this just seems like a very widespread rating.

 **►Bagrat** (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
Well, keep in mind that these are ratings for the threat that her power represents, not the actual power themselves. It determines what exactly the response for PRT teams should be in the event they come into conflict with her.

As for her power's theme, you raise a good point. If I had to guess I would have to say something around darkness. I mean look at her, she looks like someone who would be the main villain in a supernatural movie. Her horses and Mover powers all seem to be centered around darkness and shadows. Perhaps these are all off shoots of some sort of darkness manipulation?

 **►bothad**  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
That just seems a bit abstract for a power theme to me though.

 **►Chaosfaith**  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
Any more abstract than Lung's "I'm a dragon" power?

 **►bothad**  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
Fair point.

 **►Tumbles**  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
You people in Brockton Bay must be crazy. If a cape like this showed up in my city the heroes and villains would hunt them down with everyone cheering them on. How is it that she's actually getting support from any of you?

 **►Answer Key**  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
How about because we're all sick and tired of being afraid to wander the streets at night, or the day for that matter. We live in a city with a dragon and literal Nazis. The only gang that actually acted like a normal gang were the Merchants and they're all dead now.

 **►Mane Magenta**  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
Brockton Bay sounds like a horrible place to live. But why aren't you concerned that Boogeyman might start turning on the civilian population?

 **►Reave** (Verified PRT Agent)  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
This is one of the reasons that the PRT was founded, to stop capes from taking the law into their own hands. While Boogeyman might think she's doing good, in the long run, she's going to bring more harm to the city than help.

 **►ArchmageEin**  
Replied On Feb 22nd, 2011:  
"This is one of the reasons that the PRT was founded, to stop capes from taking the law into their own hands. While Boogeyman might think she's doing good, in the long run, she's going to bring more harm to the city than help."

Right, more harm than a Neo-Nazi? Your whole keeping capes in check thing doesn't work when Lung can walk down the street anytime he wants. The idea that the Protectorate and PRT have everything under control in Brockton Bay is ridiculous. I may not be shouting out in the streets asking her to take over the city, but I'm not going to criticize her for taking down the scum that have been leeching the life out of this city since before you were born.

 **►Bruce Lao**  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
Bagrat What's up with those two unconfirmed ratings?

 **►Bagrat** (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
The PRT doesn't have any concrete evidence for their existence yet, but they suspect she has some form of Thinker power. Apparently, she said some things she said that she shouldn't have known. I haven't gotten any info on the Trump power yet, but if she has some form of Trump power that would probably make her one of the more dangerous capes in the bay.

 **►Nondeceptive**  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
I forgot, what was a Trump again?

 **►Iblis**  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
It's a catch all phrase basically, but it supposed to be a power that can affect other powers. (I think).

 **►Bagrat** (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
Officially the Trump category has twelve different groupings of power, but being able to interact with other powers or your own power is a common trend with Trumps.

Out of all the capes in the bay, I think Othala is the only Trump, and she's one of the Empire's primary force multipliers.

 **►Aloha**  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
I still don't see why we're talking about a cape that doesn't exist.

 **End of Page. 1,** **2** **,** **3** **…** **23** **,** **24** **,** **25**

 **(Showing page 2 of 25)**

 **►Miraclemic**  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
Really Aloha? Are you still going on about this? Even VoidCowboy can see her and he's the conspiracy theorist.

 **►Thatdude**  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
I don't think that Aloha's wrong really, I was talking to a couple of friends and they said that they couldn't see her either. Could it be some sort of Stranger power?

 **►Bagrat** (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
A Stranger power that only works on some people? I suppose there have been weirder things. Like that guy that could control ketchup.

 **►bothad**  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
Seriously?

 **►Bagrat** (Original Poster) (Veteran Member) (The Guy in the Know)  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
Yeah, called himself Condiment King.

But back onto Boogeyman, if it is a Stranger power it only seems to work when people don't know she's real. I just chatted up some friends and they admitted the same thing. They couldn't see her until someone convinced them that she existed.

 **►Xyloloup**  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
That's such a weird power.

 **►Chaosfaith**  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
I have to wonder, why Boogeyman? It just seems like a childish name to name yourself as.

 **►TheSleepingKnight**  
Replied On Feb 23rd, 2011:  
Boogeyman is kinda of a catchall phrase to classify supernatural entities that hunt or seek to harm humans. And while it might be used on children now, back in the old days even adults were afraid of boogeymen. These weren't the ones that they used in children's tales today, but more blood and death. She seems to be making a theme of scaring her enemies (though to be fair, anyone would be scared of murder horses like that).

I foresee a number of capes learning not to stay out after dark.

 **End of Page.** **1** **, 2,** **3** **…** **23** **,** **24** **,** **25**

Lisa stopped scrolling as she considered that thought. Capes typically liked to name themselves at least something tangential to their powers. Though Tattletale was hardly the most…mature names, it was one that got the threat of her power across. Fight her and risk her spilling all her secrets. What did Taylor Hebert's moniker say about her?

 _Wants people to fear her. Wants criminals to fear her. Wants to inspire terror._

Looking back at her video interaction with the Merchants she could see that. Everything was setup in a way that demonstrated that she possessed all the power. She had them on their knees while holding the head of one of their leaders on high. That wasn't really anything groundbreaking in terms of parahuman activity, it was how Lung had managed to keep his warring groups in line underneath him. Fear was one of the driving motivators behind many gang members.

But as she stared at the screen, Lisa couldn't help but feel that she was missing something. Like staring at a blurry image, you knew that there was something there, but you just couldn't make out what. Lisa could already feel a Thinker headache coming onto her as she considered the image again, the rather blatant use of her power starting to take its toll. What was it about Boogeyman's powers that were keeping her from seeing what her powers were doing? She had already done it with most of the capes in the Bay without fault, Coil notwithstanding. What was different about Boogeyman? The image before her presented nothing expect what she already knew.

 _Boogeyman using powers. Boogeyman creating weapons._

 _Not Parahuman. Subject Triggered. No powers granted._

 _Unknown Source._

 _Connecting._

 _ **Oh, what's this?**_

 _Error!_

 _Boogeyman is—i-s—_

 _ **Amusing**_ _._

 _Disconnect!_

 _ **But your little friend isn't here.**_

 _Disconnect!_

 _ **I AM.**_

 _ **Boo.**_

Something flashed behind Lisa's eyes, something old and ancient and so very dark. It was the barest of glimpses, but what she saw was enough to freeze her heart and turn her blood to ice. Her breath became ragged as she struggled to keep herself from hyperventilating. Whatever that… _thing_ was, it wasn't something that she ever wanted to see again.

 _ **Ever.**_

Lisa screamed in pain as the mother of all Thinker headaches hit her light a freight train as her constant use of her powers came back to collect their due. She could feel all of her synapses lighting on fire as she desperately reached for an aspirin. She managed to clench her way through the burning agony as she swallowed the pills in one go before collapsing to the ground.

* * *

Lisa wasn't sure how long she had been out, but the sound of her cell phone ringing woke her up from her pain induced stupor. The Thinker groaned as she pulled herself from the ground, both in pain and exasperation. She could still feel her head throbbing against her skull like a set of drums, the aspirins having done little to ebb the flow. She would have liked to stay down for the next week or so, but there was only one person who would be calling.

Lisa took a deep breath as she tried to push aside the pain for a few minutes to inform Coil that she had found a load of squat. But there was no point in letting him know how weak she was. "Hey boss," she chirped with as much cheer as she could muster. "I—"

 _"Is Boogeyman capable of surviving a sniper shot to the head?"_ Coil asked with an urgency that was unbecoming of him. Lisa had heard a lot of the man's moods but never had she ever heard him sound so desperate. Despite herself, Lisa couldn't hold back a fully body shiver at the mention of the parahuman's name, as if a cold chill had just swept through the building.

"I—I don't know," Lisa said, too surprised to come up with a decent lie. Coil's odd attitude had caught her off guard, and with her Thinker headache, there was no way she could find out why.

 _"Find out_ _ **now**_ _,"_ Coil growled the promise of death and so much worse on the tip of his tongue. Lisa didn't need her powers to know that if she didn't give him a good answer in the next few seconds she would need to take her chances and get out of town.

"Uh…maybe," Lisa said tentatively. "The report said that she survived a point-blank pistol shot to the head, but if you hit her enough times it might stick." She could practically hear the displeasure steaming off the man at her answer. It was almost gratifying really, after being used as the man's magic ball for so long, not being able to give him the answer he wanted was amusing. Though she would prefer it if her life wasn't at risk.

 _"I will call you back shortly,"_ he growled out, not even bothering to use her real name to irritate her. Whatever was going on had to be pretty serious. Out of curiosity, Lisa pulled up a new PHO tab to see if anything new had come up. Lisa paused at the first thread to come up for Brockton Bay. She swallowed nervously as she pushed the button leading her into the den of squalor and internet idiocy.

 **Topic: Lung vs Boogeyman!  
In: Boards ► News ► Events ► Brockton Bay  
BadSamurai**(Original Poster)

 _Oh, that's not good._

* * *

Jennifer scowled as the two wires refused to be spliced together. The plastic casing slipped through her dirty fingers as she tried to keep herself from falling over. Without a chair, she was forced to stand straight up for hours at a time while she worked at the lousy wood desks she had been granted.

They weren't even sterilized!

Jennifer moved towards another desk to grab a better wire, mindful of the chain wrapped around her ankles to keep her in place. The old rust thing clanked along the ground as she searched for a better fit for what she needed. Not that she had much to choose from. Everything was either from the junkyard or stolen from a shop. A time ago she would have shouted in frustration at the inferiority of her equipment compared to what she had access to back at her university, but now she couldn't even do that. Not since Lung had her tongue removed for her rebellion.

 _"Do you believe me to be a fool?"_ _Lung asked as he towered over her, even without his powers. His presence was suffocating, like standing on the edge of a volcano and knowing that if you took one more step closer you would fall in and die. "Did you think I would not know of your rebellious thoughts?"_

 _Jennifer could only glare as she stared at the half-finished bomb before her. She had meant it to be the bomb to kill Lung, a matter transmutation of sorts to overcome his healing factor. Healing meant little if there wasn't anything left to heal. But it was still in the construction stages, with several materials still in waiting. She had done her best to hide its existence from Lung, but she had always been a copious note taker. She couldn't help but write down her thoughts on the bomb as she constructed it piece by piece, leaving behind enough for Lung to hang her with._

 _"I admire your persistence, but you have yet to learn patience," Lung said as he took hold of the unfinished bomb. Jennifer winced as a soft glow centered in Lung's palm as he brought forth what fire he could. Within a minute the device was slagged beyond use. "But while I have grown amused by your efforts to escape, this is not a transgression that can remain unpunished."_

 _Jennifer only glared, biting down on her tongue to keep herself quiet. The bruised around her wrist was a reminder of what happened when others got displeased at her mouthy attitude. Lung only sighed at her defiance, like a parent being irritated at an unruly child._

 _"If you do not wish to speak, then I see no reason why you should keep your vile tongue girl," Lung rumbled, turning around and walking away even as the Demon drew out one of his knives._

 _Panic surged through the Tinker's form as she opened her mouth in protest, only for one of her captors to hold her mouth open as Oni Lee reached in with his knife._

Jennifer shivered as she set aside the wiring. That was not a pleasant memory. The wound still burned on some days, when it was really bad it almost felt like it was being cut off again. According to the ABB men assigned to guard her, it had only been because her status as a Tinker that she had remained alive, a gift that she should cherish.

Jennifer snorted. As if she should cherish what basically amounted to being a slave. Working day in and out for a man who wouldn't know intelligence if it ripped out its heart. She was without thanks of gratitude or recognition, just another member of the ABB to serve to the whims of Lung like a dancing puppet.

Part of her regretted not taking Boogeyman up on her offer. At the very least she would still have her tongue and she would be out from under Lung's baleful eye. But she would have still been a Tinker working for someone, working _under_ someone, and that wasn't something that she couldn't allow. She was going to free herself from this if she had loose every part of her body piece by piece.

 _She would show them all._

The door to the warehouse that she was consigned to working in burst open as one of the higher-ranking ABB men came tearing through. She glared at him as he bumped into on her desks, jostling a few of her projects. The man ignored her as drew out the key to her chains. Jennifer stared at the man quizzically, it wasn't time for her bathroom break yet.

"Lung's fighting the Protectorate and Boogeyman, and Oni Lee is down, you need to get out there and help them," the man ordered in a tone that brooked no disobedience. Jennifer could feel her heart skip a beat. This was the moment she had been waiting for. With both of them distracted she could kill them.

She was tempted to kill the man with her spatial warping bomb to the right, but she held herself back. Compared to ensuring Lung's death the man was nothing. She would enact revenge on him later, but right now she needed to hold herself in check and act like the good little Tinker. She gave the man a sharp nod as he handed her a gas mask, the only real part of her costume. In the end, all it had to do was conceal her identity, and it wasn't like most people didn't already know who she was thanks to her stupidity at Cornell.

The man shoved a bag in her face before storming off, barking orders at the other standing guard. Jennifer glared at his back as she started to load her bombs into the case. As she watched the man leave she carefully set one bomb in particular in the case, high above the others. This was the one that would set her free, the one that would kill Lung.

The one that would set Bakuda free.

 _Let's see how amusing you think my attempts are now Lung,_ Jennifer thought with a savage smile she heaved the pack over her shoulder.

 _She would show them_ _ **all**_.

* * *

 **Jennifer is making her move, Lisa is seeing things that shouldn't be seen, and Coil is being forced to take action.**

 **Goodbye Brockton Bay.**

 **Special Thanks to my Patrons: Velzon, Sphinxes, Sanjay, xxpowerxx1qz, Marcel, Ask Oliver Oliversen Tegler, and RavenS013**

 **Please consider joining my Patrons in donating to my P atreon.**


	30. Nightmare 4-4

**New chapter!**

 **Special thanks to Commissar Carnifex for betaing.**

Nightmare 4.4

Boogeyman reeled as flesh and scales filled her vision. She growled as the damage that they had done to Lung melted away under the onslaught of his healing. Organs that had been nothing more than bags of flesh reformed in an instant. A Nightmare bit into the man's exposed heart, but even as warm blood erupted from the wound it was already healing over. In less than a second, the Nightmare found itself missing a few of its teeth as it pulled back in shock. Boogeyman could only watch as the previously grievous wound vanished from sight, taking the Nightmare's teeth with it.

Lung's heart had healed so quickly that it had literally _ripped_ the teeth out of her minion. All around her she could see other Nightmares going through something similar, losing pieces of themselves in tangled webs of flesh and viscera as Lung's body rebuilt itself from the ground up. Boogeyman snarled as she forged a spear of sand in her hand and rose up to sever the man's neck.

 _Let's see how fast he can heal when his head's rolling on the ground,_ she thought with vicious glee as she plowed the spear into his neck. She could feel flesh and bone break underneath her blade even as Lung howled with rage and pain. But even as she felt the blade push further and further in, she could feel it slowing down, as if she were trying to shove it through a wall of jelly. The silver scales on Lung's back collided at the point of impact like a pair of tectonic plates, snapping her spear in two.

Boogeyman growled as she formed another spear even an additional layer of armored scales wrapped over where she had struck the crime lord. The spear struck true, but instead of piercing the scales with ease, it blunted, cracking the silver armor but not breaking it. Within seconds any sign of her attack was gone.

"What?" Boogeyman blinked, surprised at the sudden turn of events. Lung hadn't demonstrated this level of healing at all during their fight. Was this something that he got as he grew larger? Boogeyman didn't have any more time to consider the implications as a massive hand pushed through the tide of darkness and sand to reach around to where she was perched. The young teen gasped with a mixture of shock and pain and the clawed hand wrapped around her form. She could feel Lung trying to squeeze her to a pulp. She was strong enough to prevent herself from being ground into a fine paste, but that still did little to alleviate her suffering. Though his flames were still being snuffed by her Nightmares, his hand was extremely hot, and probably would have given her third-degree burns if she wasn't a Brute.

Her Nightmares responded to her cries of distress, wrapping themselves around the offending wrist in an effort to saw it off from the man's body. Blood splattered across the asphalt below as the Nightmares tore into the limb like a buzz saw, but they might as well have been a child trying to move a boulder. Within moments any trace of their attack was erased by Lung's newfound healing factor as even more scales crisscrossed against his wrists.

Boogeyman paused her struggles as Lung's burning gaze met her own. There was no fear or terror in those eyes, only a mindless blinding rage that would make the sun seem like a firecracker in comparison. The feeling was… unnatural. No being should be able to feel that much anger, and only anger at that. Every other emotion was being pushed aside to make room for his all-encompassing rage. Molten spittle flew from the false dragon's mouth as he roared, his sharp fangs clearly visible to the restrained cape.

A sharp crack erupted from outside of the swirling vortex of Nightmares and blasted a hole straight through. Boogeyman flinched a bit as part of Lung's head exploded, exposing his insides and splattering fluids all over her face. Lung roared in pain, giving her enough space to slip out of her grasp by turning herself into a shadow. As she pulled back into her swarm of Nightmares she had them pull back themselves. It was obvious that something was wrong, and given every time they struck him he seemed to grow stronger they were proving to be counterproductive as well.

Her Nightmares pulled back into groups, but that did little to deter Lung's anger. Even as his head wound healed over another layer of scales was added to his face he charged after one of the groups as his flames reignited. But despite how utterly terrifying his rage was, there didn't seem to be any sense or pattern to it. He would charge after one Nightmare only to stop half way and attack another. He was still beyond deadly of course, wading through waves of Nightmares, but he wasn't trying to focus any of them down.

It was the rage of a mad dog, not a gang leader.

Boogeyman took a breath as she emerged from the ground a good distance from Lung's towering form. He didn't appear to be any larger from when she had tried to kill him, but it was still massive, looming over the battlefield like a bad omen. His personal inferno encased his form like a cocoon, burning away at the very air around him. Even with his lack of coherent thought, he was still proving to be a formidable foe.

"Boogeyman," a stern voice said, causing her to turn to the source. Miss Militia's scarf covered face was set into an angry glare, her eyebrows furrowed and her eyes gleaming with wariness and distaste. A rather large gun was being pointed near her chest, but the woman didn't seem to be making any moves to shoot her.

At least not yet.

"Miss Militia, what can I do for you?" Boogeyman asked, eyeing the gun warily. This one was much bigger than that pistol she had been shot with before, and while she didn't doubt that she could survive being shot was painful.

"What did you just do?" she asked, her voice cold and uncompromising. This wasn't the PR approved Miss Militia, this was the real woman underneath the mask. Someone who wouldn't stop until every threat to what they held dear was dead or gone. She wasn't playing games anymore.

"I tried to kill Lung," Boogeyman said as she waved a hand to the still rampaging dragon. She managed to avoid wincing as Lung slammed into a building in his blind rage, shattering the structure. "As you can see, it didn't take."

"No kidding," Assault breathed out with an awe-struck tone as he pulled himself up from the ground. The red costumed parahuman hadn't cracked a single smile during the fight, instead keeping a stone-faced expression of concentration that made her understand why he had been so successful as Madcap. "What did you _do_ to him? I've never seen him this angry, and I was there when Purity and Night pulverized his legs into mush."

"I may have brought up his Trigger event," Boogeyman said without a hint of regret. Horrific as Trigger events might be, Lung didn't deserve any special treatment. If he didn't want to be reminded about his Trigger event he should have gone in for therapy when this happened, not become a crime lord.

All around the parahumans flinched, a primal fear coiling around their hearts in automatic response. She was too distracted to pay attention to most of the fearful thoughts that flashed through their minds, but one in particular caught her attention. There was that same flash of fear in Battery, but it was tinged with regret and shame. What was most odd about it was that it wasn't the same type of knee jerk reaction that the others had. It was a fear of discovery, and thoughts of vials flashed through her mind. Boogeyman didn't want to get sidetracked while Lung was still alive, but she gave the Breaker a look from the corner of her eye.

She held back a smile as another flash of fear coiled up her spine as she stiffened in response.

 _Let these weak heroes know fear._

 _Focus,_ Boogeyman thought, steeling herself against some of her more basic instincts. As gratifying as it would be to make these so called "heroes" quake in their boots, they had more important things to deal with.

"But something's off with his power, he started healing a _lot_ faster than he had been a minute ago," Boogeyman said, waving her hand towards Lung as a Nightmare ripped his ear off. Within seconds the auditory extremity reasserted itself, covered in a much thick plate of scales that her Nightmare's teeth found much harder to crack.

Miss Militia seemed to be the first to shake off her daze from the revelation of what Boogeyman had done and added her two-cents. "That's not too strange, Lung gets more powerful the larger he is…"

"Yes, I know how his power works," Boogeyman said, cutting off the woman with a dismissive snort. Did the woman really think she wouldn't have gone into battle with Lung without knowing how his power worked? Without knowing what she would be up against? "But look, he hasn't gotten any bigger and he's still healing far faster than normal. I had his entrails on the streets and now there's not a scratch on him."

"In any case, none of us have anything that can take down Lung at this point," Battery said, apparently having steeled herself from Boogeyman's knowing look. Soot and grime covered the woman's costume, blacking out the circuit-like highlights on her costume. "At least not without a lot of collateral damage," she added, glancing towards Miss Militia.

Boogeyman held back an irritated growl towards the aforementioned parahuman. She certainly had the capabilities to end Lung's career before he got too ramped up, but instead chose to play a game with the man. Only ever fighting enough to hurt him rather than kill, and whatever she said, Lung had no place in this world. The man hadn't fought at Endbringer battle since his first and only match against Leviathan, and unless one came to Brockton Bay she doubted he ever would again. He had no purpose in this world but to spread suffering and misery and the Protectorate had the gall to allow him to live because he _might_ be useful one day. Still, she could see Battery's point. At this size, anything that the Blaster had that could actually kill Lung would produce far too much collateral damage to be safely used inside the city.

"Velocity managed to get Dauntless to the hospital and he's on his way back," Miss Militia said, apparently not deciding to voice the fact that Velocity would be useless against Lung. "Armsmaster is on his way, but Triumph is down and in medical."

"What, why?" Assault asked, nearly doing a double take at the heroine.

"Apparently a new cape calling herself Deimos dropped a PRT agent at the front gates and told them he was a Coil spy. He's in medical right now, babbling nonsense. The PRT agents that witnessed the altercation claimed she said she was an associate of Boogeyman," Miss Militia said, giving the young cape a hard look. Boogeyman bit back a growl. She didn't care about the man in the slightest, but she didn't need this tenuous alliance falling apart right now.

 _I said to be subtle, Vicky,_ Boogeyman thought with no small amount of frustration. Granted, it's probably what she would have done if she had gone in Vicky's stead, but it was still the principle of the matter. "I fail to see how this changes things."

"You assaulted a PRT officer and you think it's nothing?" Battery asked with a snarl, her skin emitting a soft glow. She looked about ready to pounce before Assault put his hand on her shoulder and gave her a shake. Boogeyman could feel the anger rolling off the woman dissipate a little bit as she schooled her features and held her ground. She wasn't going to attack her, but she really wanted to. Boogeyman caught snippets of her memories, a young girl asking her father what was wrong as they buried an empty casket into the ground, tears running down his face.

The young parahuman just shrugged. " _I_ didn't assault him, and in any case, he was selling you all out to Coil for a few extra bucks. And given all the villains he's helped break out of conveys, I'd say that he's hurt way more PRT agents than I have."

Of course, she didn't know that for sure, that was why she had wanted Victoria to pay him a visit, but it wasn't that unreasonable jump in logic given his position in the organization. That was probably the _least_ of what he did in any event. She wasn't going to feel sympathy for someone who betrayed the people that trusted them. A bit petty perhaps, given her history, but she didn't care.

"But is this really the conversation that you want to be having right now?" Boogeyman asked, eyes flickering back over to Lung as he chased another stray Nightmare. The heroes exchanged looks, but they might as well have been open books to her. They didn't want her to get off scot free from this, but they couldn't afford to alienate her while Lung was still active.

"No, it's not," Miss Militia said, preempting the slowly forming words of her comrades. Her weapon shifted into another gun that she didn't recognize, but whatever it was it was large enough that she wouldn't have wanted to get shot by it. "But we will deal with this later Boogeyman. Don't think that this is going to absolve you of your crimes.

Boogeyman just gave the Blaster a sharp smile that chilled the air around them. "Oh, Miss Militia, I wouldn't have it any other way."

* * *

Though he was a baseline human there was no doubt in Armsmaster's mind that he was one of the most dangerous members of the local Protectorate. It wasn't because he had some sort of innate raw power like Assault or Dauntless that could blow away most people like bowling pins. He couldn't level buildings like Purity or demolish entire streets like the late and unlamented Kaiser. At the end of the day, he was just another squishy little mortal that could die if he fell down the stairs wrong. And yet, he could stand up to each one of them and in most cases, overpower them.

No, what made him so dangerous was that he was prepared for everything. Unlike other capes, his powers allowed him to grow and adapt to opponents, creating technological marvels that surpassed anything a mundane man could create. Over the years his armor had transformed from a simple power armor into a mass of contingencies. He had weapons and tech for dealing with almost every cape in the city and then some.

But Lung…

Armsmaster bit back a frustrated growl as his motorcycle roared through the streets, the flashing lights on the front clearing away what little late-night traffic still remained. The comforting thrum of his bike did little to ease his irritation at the gang leader. It wasn't even so much his actions that angered him so, though he did find them despicable, but rather the power that Lung possessed.

The ability to continue growing in strength as a battle progressed was a horrendously broken ability. It made defeating him conventionally difficult, if not impossible. To little force and Lung would shake it off and grow stronger. Too much force and it was likely that Lung would be killed, and though Armsmaster wouldn't shed any tears over the gang leader, he wasn't an executioner. Until they slapped a kill order on the man the Protectorate had to play by the rules. Which meant figuring out a way to defeat Lung without killing him.

 _Easier said than done_ , Armsmaster thought as he swerved to avoid a clearly intoxicated driver. His helmet and bike mounted cameras flashed pictures of the car's license plates and forwarded them to the BBPD's alert system.

He had tried to develop counters to the draconian parahuman before, but they had all ended up failures. Attempts to cauterize wounds to slow down his healing were inefficient and ultimately counterproductive. Attrition didn't work against someone who only grew in power. A preemptive strike had some limited success, but ultimately it had the same issue even if Lung was ramped all the way up. To little force and it would only enrage him, too much and it would kill him.

His latest attempt held promise though. A powerful sedative that would be capable of slowing down if not outright stopping Lung's regeneration. Chemicals weren't his specialty, but he had enough research from various Tinkers, both villain and hero, to jumpstart the project. Even with that help, it had been a trying creation. It wasn't like mechanics where everything was ordered and structured. Creating a drug was chaotic and often prone to chance. It was more than a little frustrating for a perfectionist like himself to be thwarted at every turn because a pair of atoms wouldn't bond together. But months of research and errors had finally paid off. The drug had gone through numerous iterations, but he finally had a concoction that he believed would work.

Though successful or not, he had yet to submit it to the oversight committee to ensure the Tinker tech was safe to use in the field. It was all a farce really, and one that never failed to grate on his nerves.

Tinker tech couldn't be understood by conventional science, and yet those "experts" had the audacity to claim that he didn't understand the implications of his own tech? When had been the last time _they_ had been in the field and needed a wrist mounted plasma cutter to slice through Hookwolf's armor? What use was PR when lives were on the line?

He followed the rules, of course, and he knew that they weren't just there to make his life miserable. History had shown them what happened when a new Tinker extended a little too far and it blew up in their faces. Het got it. But he was hardly a new Tinker who needed to be restrained. He was one of the best Tinkers in the world, he knew exactly what he was doing. But right now, they didn't have time to deal with rules and regulations, not when they had such an unprecedented chance to cripple the gangs.

The vials that he had managed to smuggle out from the Rig were stored safely away in his halberd. They weren't the version that he had given to the committee for review, but instead the previous iteration which had been ironically _too_ powerful. But he couldn't risk the chance of Lung consolidating his power with the Empire on the back foot. It was a risk that he was going to have to take. And since there was no way for him to retrieve the final drug without raising suspicion, he had no recourse but this.

He knew that Piggot wouldn't call him out on it as long as he got the job done, but these last few weeks had demonstrated the folly of that way of thinking. Armsmaster grit his teeth beneath is helmet at the reminder of his failure, and it was _his_ failure, not matter what anyone said. He was the leader of the Protectorate and should have kept a better eye on the Wards, regardless of Piggot's choice to put them under her authority.

What Sophia had done was antithetical to the very core ideals of the Protectorate. And thanks to her, half the city thought that they were either incompetent or uncaring to civilians. All because of his failure to keep the girl in line. That was on his head, as were all the lives she had ruined since her Wardship began.

After everything that had come out, the fact that they had been able to solve several unsolved murders that could be attributed to Sophia was less than surprising. If it wasn't for her mental break she would be rotting in juvenile detention, assuming she wasn't tried as an adult. And as for her part in creating Boogeyman, well he was far too frustrated with that situation to articulate his feelings coherently.

"I'm two minutes to rendezvous," Armsmaster said as the telltale glow in the distance drew closer and closer. Thick plumes of smoke rose up from the battlefield like a dark omen. Colin put a little more speed on as he tried to cut down the distance. The longer Lung fought, the more likely his fire would spread out of control. That was the real damage that was wrought from his battles more than anything, the burning infernos that were left in his path.

 _"Understood, Boogeyman is on the scene and assisting us for the time being,"_ Miss Militia's voice said over the radio, tired and weary but alive. His lips twisted in distaste at the mention of the rouge parahuman, but he didn't fault her reasoning. Despite the arrest warrant out on Boogeyman's head Lung was the bigger threat, and any attempt to bring her in would unleash an inordinate amount of backlash from the public.

"Very well," Armsmaster replied, his voice toneless. Getting frustrated wouldn't get him anything at this point. He needed to focus on what was happening with Lung. Armsmaster brought his motorcycle to a stop at the PRT cordon. He gave a slight nod of acknowledgment to the men and women keeping any curious civilians away from the battle as he strode towards the carnage.

Crater lined the street as evidence of Lung's now immense size as torrents of flames jumped across the abandoned buildings. The silver scaled gang leader stood in the middle of what he could only describe to be a dance of destruction.

Militia was using a gun so powerful that in any other circumstances she would have been likely to face a hearing. As it was, bullets that give Hookwolf pause were washing off Lung like pellets of rain. Assault and Battery were working as the effective tag team that they were, but their ability to hurt Lung without being exposed to his flames was limited at best. His grip on his weapon tightened a bit as he spotted Boogeyman.

The young parahuman had a vicious look on her face, full of fangs and death. A dark glint in her eyes sent shivers down his spine as she swung a scythe that taller that he was. Dark masses of her minions harried Lung, drawing his attention away from her, nipping at his heels before scattering like rats. A cape that he didn't recognize was also on the frontline, dressed head to toe in a dark outfit with a skull mask to conceal their face. Armsmaster didn't recognize them, but judging by the way Lung's head would snap back and forth with each one of her equine assisted blows she was a powerful Brute. All in all, it was an effective strategy, which only proved how dangerous Lung was given that they didn't seem to be doing anything to him.

His scales remained relatively unblemished by the barrage of firepower upon him, but Armsmaster could tell that something was wrong. As big as he was, he should have been bigger. Using his onboard computer to compare previous conflicts with the gang leader revealed that at this point in the righting Lung should have been another five feet taller and have developed the ability to fly.

His wings were certainly there, but they were covered in silver scales, another oddity, and seemed to be using them as shields instead of locomotion for flight. More than that, the man's fighting style was strange. Even in his largest form Lung seemed to retain some form of his mind, a glint of viciousness in his eyes that never went out. He was brutal but effective in his attacks, using them to feed his own power before crushing all of his enemies.

There was none of that here.

Only an irrational madness that only seemed to make sense to Lung. He didn't seem to be focusing on the largest threat, but rather that he was chasing whatever had his attention at the time. There was no logic or efficiency to his actions, only a mindless rage.

On one hand that was good news, as irrational opponents were far easier to trick and maneuver. On the other hand, that meant that he had no idea what Lung might do in his current state. There was no telling what an irrational Lung might accomplish with his current size and power. It made his glad that he had smuggled out his drug and alleviated some of the guilt that he felt for breaking the rules like so.

Armsmaster activated his suit's sealant measures as he charged into the fight. His computer was already warning him of the intense heat, but he waved it off as he turned on the cooling countermeasures. They weren't perfect, but they would protect him long enough to get in close.

"I didn't think you wanted to fight Lung," he heard Boogeyman say once he got close enough. He twisted around to give Assault a glare from behind his mask as a chunk of debris moving at high speed passed far too close to him for comfort. Assault didn't give him a sheepish grin like he might in a less stressful situation, but instead just gave a hard nod. For all his faults Armsmaster would admit that once he got serious Assault was a terrifying opponent.

"You looked like you needed help," the second cape said. Armsmaster frowned behind his mask. There was something about that voice that he found oddly familiar, even with the slight distortion the mask was causing. But he didn't have time to concern himself with such things, even if such thoughts weren't breaking the unwritten rules.

Armsmaster rushed in-between the gap that Boogeyman and the unknown cape had made and slammed his halberd into Lung's scaled form. The halberd in question had been a previous attempt and failure at making an anti-Endbringer weapon, but it still had its uses. The blade would project a short lived hard-light structure around its edge, creating a sharpness that no ordinary blade could match. With his servo assisted arms, he was able to smash through Lung's scaled hide.

But his face twisted in shock behind his helmet as a new set of scales erupted from the man's skin in response with a speed that he had never demonstrated before. It moved so quickly that his blade almost got caught in-between the forming scales. As he wrenched it out, taking a few scales along with it, his suit's sensors screamed in warning as Lung's massive head bent down to tear him in two.

Armsmaster felt a pair of strong arms wrap underneath his armpits before he was pulled from the ground. Lung's face smashed into the spot he had been standing, shattering the asphalt. Armsmaster looked behind him to see the skeletal mask of the new cape as he was pulled to safety. The landed on the ground roughly, spider web cracks emerging from the cape's feet as they landed on the ground. Not a flier then, but a powerful enough Brute to make long jumps.

"Thank you," Armsmaster said somewhat awkwardly. In any other situation, he would most likely be trying to arrest the cape, assuming that she was allied with Boogeyman. But Lung was an A-Class threat and as such the rules of dealing with criminals could be bent in such situations.

"No problem," the masked cape said with a level of cavalier that made him pause. That type of calmness in the heat of battle wasn't something that could be faked or trained. That spoke of an experienced cape, not a fresh Trigger that had fallen into Boogeyman's hands. A rebranding then?

Lung's angry roar snapped him out of his musings. Rings of black sand surrounded his wrists, spinning like chainsaws in a clear effort to remove his hands. But if Lung was being harmed in any meaningful way by the attack he didn't show it, instead focusing his attention on a back of minions that cape a bit too close. Armsmaster winced at the high-pitch squeal of the horse-like minions as jets of flames spewed out from Lung's mouth.

Once he was a safe distance from the gang leader the masked cape set him down and charged back into the battle. Oddly enough her clothing wasn't singed at all in the attack, some kind of touch based invulnerability? In any case, Armsmaster realized that if he wanted to try and get through those thick scales he was going to have to immobilize the man first.

Using his eyes to manipulate his computer he reloaded his wrist launchers with the containment foam that he had onboard. As the launchers loaded with a sharp click Armsmaster moved in with a speed that some would find surprising coming from a man in a suit of armor. Powerful servos assisted the man as he pushed roughly half a ton of metal and circuitry towards the flaming giant. Once he had gotten back in range he fired.

The stream of white liquid almost immediately twisted to expand as it struck the air, but not before it fell onto Lung like a rolling tide. Lung roared in defiance as the white substance covered him with varying degrees of success, but he was far too large at this point to get all of him with what little supply Armsmaster had in his suit.

But it was more than enough to prove irritating to the man. One of his hands was caught in the blast in a reflexive effort to shield himself. More of it moved to uselessly cover his side while some ran down his leg, encasing his knee to that he couldn't bend it. Part of it even managed to splash over the upper part of Lung's face, covering one of his eyes in a layer of thick foam.

Lung howled in rage at his impediment, ripping and tearing at the afflicted areas. Boogeyman's minions descended on the man like a pack of starving dogs, slashing at the scales with all that they could muster. They did little in the end, but they were distracting enough to set up his shot.

There was a small puff of pressurized air at the tip of his halberd as the dart shot up into Lung's open mouth. Lung's blazing eye turned towards him, but Armsmaster wasn't too worried. Once the serum worked its way into his system thanks to his heightened adrenaline he would be down in a minute or two. Lung howled as a black spear followed his example and punctured the inside of his mouth, red blood flowing out his fanged lips. But even as Boogeyman pulled back Lung ripped the offending weapon out of his mouth and turned his attention to the containment foam.

At first, Armsmaster wasn't too worried. While containment foam wasn't indestructible, it did take a tremendous amount of force to break the bonds between the chemical agents. Lung's personal inferno might eventually weaken it, but it was going to take time the gang leader didn't have.

Then Lung ripped his face off and Armsmaster had to reassess the situation.

It wasn't _too_ unusual for Lung to remove body parts that were damaged or restrained once he had become powerful enough, but it was usually with a bit more finesse. More to the fact, the way that his malformed face started to repair itself once he had torn the parts that had been covered in foam off healed far too quickly. Even if it hadn't brought him down yet the formula should have been enough to slow down his regeneration. Instead, it remained unchanged as ever, quickly repairing the self-inflicted damage.

 _Perhaps it didn't deploy?_ Armsmaster mused as he dodged Lung's sweeping tail before delivering a retaliatory strike of his own. His blade only bounced off of Lung's armored wing as it unfolded to shield the gang leader. It was possible that the extreme heat had managed to melt the dart's triggering mechanism, but that wasn't too big of a problem, he had two more at the ready.

Even as his suit's warning systems came online as the internal temperature started to heat up he focused on making his next shot. His opportunity came as Lung ripped his imprisoned hand off, exposing his flesh to the world. Even as his bones and scales started to regrow Armsmaster fired. This time he was able to watch as the dark sunk into the man's muscles, pumping the serum through his bloodstream.

But even as Armsmaster jumped back to let his suit's internal cooling system calm down he couldn't help but frown behind his helmet. There was still no visible reaction from Lung, and his healing seemed to remain as implacable as ever. More than that, but he hadn't appeared to have grown a single inch since he had entered combat.

Something was wrong.

 _A Trump?_ Armsmaster mused as an unfortunate car was flung directly into Lung's chest thanks to Assault's kinetic manipulation. The gang lord went flying back even as Boogeyman followed, scythe in hand and undaunted by the billowing flames.

"I need someone to contact the Think Tank and get some confirmation if Lung's powers have changed in any way," Armsmaster said over his radio. If Lung had someone managed to change his powers then they could be dealing with an even more serious problem. "Tell them I'm calling in my favor."

 _"Understood,"_ Velocity replied, no doubt already on his way to pass the message along. But even with his friend's promise, he couldn't help but grimace at the entire situation.

The truth was that even if Lung's powers weren't changed in some way he doubted they would have been able to defeat the man without his drugs. They just didn't have a Brute powerful enough to engage Lung head on. He knew Piggot had been requesting for a transfer for years, but nothing had come of it. The only heroic Brutes in the city that could compete with Lung for a time were all in New Wave, who hadn't been taking many of their calls since the Shadow Stalker mess.

He doubted they would allow something like that to get in the way of helping beat Lung, but that didn't mean they simply didn't know about it because they weren't answering their phones. Which meant the only Brutes powerful enough to take Lung head on were Boogeyman and her new cape.

 _This is not an optimal situation,_ he groused as he shifted his wrist blaster to the anti-flame gas that had managed to acquire from another Tinker since Lung's last rampage. He didn't have much of it, but it wasn't as if he was going to find a better situation to use it in. As Lung regained his footing, Armsmaster charged forward, ready to take part in a battle he knew he couldn't win.

* * *

Jennifer grinned as she watched the assembly of ABB members that had followed her writhe on the ground in agony, courtesy of her pain bomb. It worked by setting off all of the pain receptors in a person's body through electrical currents and judging by the soundless screams they were unable to formulate it was quite successful. Jennifer pulled her gaze away from the display to focus on the battle below. She had more important things to do than care about the group that had kept her captive. Besides, they would live.

Probably.

Jennifer could feel rage blossom in her heart as the towering mass of muscle that was Lung ripped apart the street in a mindless violence befitting the gang leader. All that power at his fingertips and this is what he did with it?

 _Pathetic,_ Jennifer thought with a snarl. Once she had killed the fool and wrested control of the ABB from the remainder of the lieutenant she was going to do far more than play crime lord to this little backwater city. But she could plan her ascension to power later, right now she had to deal with Lung first. Once he was dead nothing would be able to stop her.

Jennifer pulled the bomb that she had been working on in secret. It looked no different than any of her other bombs, with a haphazard casing that revealed the lackluster quality of the materials she had been forced to work with. But despite its appearance, if everything worked out the way she had designed it to then it would be Lung's death. It was an actually rather simple variant of one of her glass bombs, but with some subtle differences with how it worked.

Most of her bomb were instantaneous but only affected a certain area. If something was one inch outside the radius of one of her standard glass bombs it would remain unaffected by the detonation. _This_ glass bomb worked differently. Instead of simply transmuting the entire area, it would "feed" off of any organic material it was exposed to, turning it into glass.

Detonate it in a field of grass? It wouldn't stop until it ran out of plants to turn.

Certainly a risk given the possibility of it getting out of control, but it would ensure that even if Lung managed to avoid the initial blast it would still be more than deadly to him. It wouldn't matter how large he got in response to this, all it would do was add more fuel to feed the process. She would turn the very thing that gave him strength into his downfall.

 _I better get on with that,_ Jennifer thought, tearing her thoughts away from amusing daydreams of Lung begging for mercy. It would so much better to see in in real life. The bomb Tinker loaded the explosive into her modified grenade launcher and prepared to fire. She was hardly an expert shot by any stretch of the imagination, but with Lung as big as he was, missing was unlikely. Besides, she only needed to get the tiniest part of him inside the detonation radius for the process to begin.

The man's silver torso took up the entirety of her scope, aside from the occasional waves of black from Boogeyman and her minions. She was sorely tempted to try and get the little shadow brat too, but if there was one thing that she had learned from the ABB it was the virtue of patience. She would get her revenge on Boogeyman soon enough, but she wanted to savior it, to revel in the girl's defeat at the hands of her better.

Jennifer felt joy swell in her heart as she squeezed the trigger and the bomb shot through the air. The seemingly small and otherwise harmless devices arced up before racing back down towards the ground. For a brief moment, Lung's head twisted towards her position and Jennifer felt a sting of terror at the sight of a pair of blazing stars of hate. Molten salvia dripped from a maw that could devour her whole with room to spare. But her fear quickly turned to excitement as the bomb struck the man's chest and detonated in a flash of blindly bright light.

Lung's screams were music to her ears.

Jennifer watched with undisguised glee as scales and flesh turned into lifeless glass in the blink of an eye, racing across his form in a wave of death. The process wasn't instantaneous, she had made sure of that. She wanted Lung to suffer, to know in his dying moments that he was bested by her, the one that he had dismissed as a tool, a slave. He would feel his own body turn to glass as every inch of his flesh was agonizingly transmuted.

But her satisfied smile quickly turned to a surprised frown as sections of Lung's glass body shattered, as if he was flexing ice off his limbs. Fresh scales popped out underneath, like flowers erupting from a melting snowbank.

 _That…isn't possible,_ Jennifer thought with a chill of fear. Lung had never demonstrated the ability to heal like that before, and he defiantly shouldn't have been able to outpace the effects of her bomb. She did manage to calm herself a little bit, reminding herself that his healing factor would only feed the bomb's effects even more. It didn't matter how much he healed, he wouldn't be able to stop it.

But Jennifer's rationalizations of her success quickly fell to the wayside as it happened again, and again. Glass would encase parts of Lung's body, even going as deep as his organs, but each time the glass shattered, revealing newly formed flesh underneath. All the while he was still fighting the other combatants, and as far as she could tell, he was winning.

 _He should be dead,_ the bomb Tinker screamed in the silence of her mind. _He shouldn't be able to move, much less fight._

Though perhaps fighting might have been a bit of an exaggeration. It was true that Lung was still being assailed by the heroes and Boogeyman, but he didn't appear to be doing much to them purposefully. He made swipes at them, but he seemed to be distracted by the smallest of things, a far cry from the focused gang leader that she had grown to despise.

 _His brain might be getting damaged,_ the still rational part of her mind whispered as she watched the battle with growing dread. If Lung's mine was constantly being transmuted back and forth like the rest of his body was, then it was likely he wasn't capable of rational thought if he was capable of any thought really.

With a shaky hand, Jennifer reached down into her back of tricks. She hadn't been able to collect too many of her creations before she had all but been shoved out the door at gun point, and what she did grab was hardly the cream of the crop. Only a few of them had any truly exotic effects, and those that did wouldn't be able to kill Lung if he could survive _that._

Jennifer's breath left her body as Lung's burning gaze swept back towards her. She barely had a second to move before a stream of fire so hot that it could felt through steel like butter. Jennifer didn't even have time to think as she threw herself to the side, narrowly dodging the blast of flames as it ate away at the spot she had just been standing like a hungry beast. The Tinker heaved in mild shock even as she felt blisters break out across her skin.

 _I—I need to get out of here,_ Jennifer wailed in her mind as she pulled herself up from the ground. She paid the still writhing gang members no mind as she raced to the way they came, eager to get as far away from Lung as she possibly could. She didn't know if Lung would remember what transpired here tonight, or if he was even going to survive, but she wasn't too eager to find out.

If he died in combat then she still had to prepare to take over the gang. If he did survive, well Jennifer had a feeling that she was going to have a lot more to worry about than simply trying to take over a gang.

The part of her that wasn't trembling in sheer terror at the display of power that her enslaver had just demonstrated was practically boiling with rage. She had been bested by that brainless slab of muscle once again, and this time it didn't even appear to be intentional on his part.

 _This isn't how it was supposed to go!_

Jennifer had never liked failure. The idea that she could be "not good enough" at something always grated on her nerves. Her failure at being recognized for her genius at Cornell haunted her like a cold specter, a black mark at her otherwise extraordinary track record. And now here she was again, unable to prove her superiority because of Lung. Because that idiot couldn't just stay down and _die!_

She needed something bigger, better. Something that the mere threat of using would make Lung cower and make nations notice her potential, her genius. Ideas started to flow through her head as she raced back towards the ABB warehouse. No more waiting, no more miss nice bomber. She would teach those idiots to fear her. She would show them the heights that her genius could go and they would gasp in awe and tremble in terror.

* * *

Boogeyman wasn't sure how long she had been fighting. Minutes? Hours? It was hard to tell when she didn't have any real measure of exhaustion to judging the passing of time by. She supposed, in the end, it didn't matter because however long it had been, it hadn't been long enough to put Lung down.

It should have been.

There should have been no way that _anything_ could survive what Lung had been through. He had been injected with a serum that was supposed to slow down his healing if what she got from Armsmaster's fears of not working were true. He was hit with an explosive that appeared to be turning him into glass. He was facing her and a good chunk of the local Protectorate alongside her and Vicky.

Vicky had long since pulled back from engaging Lung directly and had taken up throwing chunks of debris at the towering man in an effort to distract him. Chunks of concrete that could have crushed cars bounced off him like beach balls. Miss Militia's bullets shed against his scales like water. They probably would have all been dead if it wasn't for Lung's scales turning into glass. Attacking the spaces of his body that were being transmuted so far had been the only reliable method of harming Lung.

Blood and guts were strewn across the ground as she shoved another spear into the man's glass gut, ripping up the dragon's insides. It healed over just as it had a thousand times before, but it was getting slower. It was hardly a snail's pace, but it was certainly a marked difference from what it had been after the man's change. Perhaps Armsmaster's drug hadn't been as useless as it had first appeared.

"Why. Won't. You. Stay. Down." Boogeyman growled out between her gnashing teeth as she tried to carve Lung's throat out with her scythe. There was no amusement or even fear in the man's aura, only a burning endless rage. She had backed the rat into a corner and now it was lashing out.

At this point, she was the only one who could withstand being so close to Lung's inferno for an extended period of time and even so it was hardly a pleasant experience. Fire so bright it turned night to day had engulfed several buildings, revealing the draconian gang lord's form in all its horrible glory. Battery could only engage for a second or two at best, and already had some pretty nasty burns to show what happened when she mistimed it. Armsmaster was the only other one who could withstand Lung's flames and live thanks to his suit. He still had to back down every now and then to let his suit cool down, but Boogeyman would have been lying that she wasn't grateful for the assistance.

Speaking of which…

Boogeyman pulled to the side to give room for the aforementioned Tinker. His iconic beard was sealed away behind a full-face plate, but that did little to hide how he felt from her. She could feel the coils of fear wrapped around him, the concern of losing and letting Lung go free eating away at him like a cancer. But despite that, the man didn't allow is fear to paralyze his actions, and instead focused all of his effort on bringing Lung down.

The tip of Armsmaster's halberd slammed into a section of Lung's sternum that had transformed into glass, shattering the whole thing. White fumes erupted from the shaft of the weapon, coating Lung's exposed skin in ice. Boogeyman could see that the healing flesh was already pushing against the frozen portions, but it was much slower than what she expected it to be. It appeared that even Lung's newfound healing had its limits.

But defeating Lung in this fashion would take time, and the man didn't appear to be tiring. She wasn't tiring either, but the same couldn't be said for any of the other combatants. Boogeyman was about to make a comment to Armsmaster about it when the man's head tilted to the side as if he was listening to something. Boogeyman could feel threads of curiosity and slight alarm pass through the man.

"Fall back, support is on the way," Armsmaster said, his voice echoing through a pair of speakers on his throat. Boogeyman was skeptical of what backup could possibly take this beast down, but she was willing to listen to the man for a time. She impaled a spear into one of Lung's burning eyes one last time before pulling back along with Armsmaster. Her Nightmares were still keeping Lung busy, and by the looks of it, the man hadn't even noticed that they had left, so lost in his rage and pain for any coherent thought.

"So, what backup do you have that could possibly stop that?" Boogeyman said as she came to a stop where the other heroes had gathered. Deimos stood behind her, a small tinge of nervousness eating its way into her psyche. She supposed standing on the opposite side of the heroes would certainly be a jarring experience for the girl.

Miss Militia looked like she was about to say something when a bolt of energy lanced out from the billowing clouds of smoke. The blueish pillar struck Lung's torso with the force of a wrathful god, taking a good chunk of his chest along with it. Boogeyman looked up to see Legend burst forth from the clouds, hands lit up with residual energy.

"Never mind," Boogeyman said, somewhat cowed by the almost casual display of power. She had been able to do worse to Lung earlier, but it had taken her all. If Legend was capable of something like that in the few seconds that he was present, what else could he do?

Perhaps even more awe-inspiring than Legend's display of power was that Lung was _still_ getting up. There was a hole in his chest that she could fit through with relative ease and his spine had all but been vaporized and he was still fighting. Lung's serpentine neck twisted around as he fired a stream of flames as the Triumvirate Blaster. Instead of dodging, Legend fired another beam and struck the inferno head on.

Billowing clouds of steam erupted from their point of impact as superheated air met Legend's freezing laser. Lung howled in defiance as another beam struck him, this time in the neck. Scales and flesh gave way under the mind-numbing barrage as Legend let lose enough firepower to level a building. Boogeyman could only watch as Lung's neck severed in two, depositing his head on the ground.

Lung wasn't dead, Boogeyman could see that what little of his neck was still twitching and the bottomless pit of rage that had overtaken his mind had yet to dissipate. She could see flesh and bone emerging from the stump of his neck, but even with his healing speed, it would be a long time before he was a threat again. How he was even alive after all that was still a mystery to her, but powers were weird like that.

Boogeyman couldn't help but feel a twinge of unease as Legend floated down to their position. This was one of the strongest heroes in the nation, if not the world. While she didn't doubt her fighting abilities, she knew that she would akin to a fly splattering against a windshield. His expression was carved from stone, but to her, he was a swirling eddy of emotion. She could feel his concern over the entire situation bubbling to the surface, but there were deeper fears down there. Most of them were rather mundane for the most part, fear of losing his family and the like, but there were some more interesting ones down there.

He was afraid that he wasn't living up to the image he presented, doubts and concerns over what his friends were doing eating away at his soul, a noxious poison that made him look the rest of the Triumvirate with a wary eye. Boogeyman steeled her expression at the brief glimpse of a silvery vial that flashed in the very back of his mind, far away from the front of her thoughts. Battery had long since been pulled out, but she could still remember that same type of vial flashing through the woman's mind.

 _ **The brighter the light, the darker the shadow.**_

"Secure the villain," Legend said, his voice as commanding as the media liked to portray it as. Some might even call it friendly, but Boogeyman could see some of the darker emotions waging their way to the surface of the man's mind. Boogeyman could feel a tendril of terror wrap around Victoria's heart as Legend turned to face them.

"I understand that this was all your doing," Legend said, arms crossed and expression stern. There were hints of disapproval and anger in the man's aura, but none of the fear that she had become accustomed to. But despite the fact that one of the most powerful Blasters on the planet was staring her down after demonstrating _why_ he had earned that title, Boogeyman couldn't help but rather irritated with the blame being thrust on her shoulders. It reminded her too much of Winslow, practically begging for the teachers to do something only for _her_ to get a reprimand for making a fuss about such _trivial_ matters.

Boogeyman didn't quite bare her fangs, but her expression did twist into a more aggressive look. Legend's arms unfolded, faint traces of energy dancing along his fingertips as the rest of the Protectorate followed his lead. If it wasn't for Victoria putting her hand on her shoulder to pull her back she might have done something…. stupid. Which was fortunate, because she had lost a decent number of her Nightmares thanks to Lung.

"If you mean taking steps to make sure that Lung can't hurt any more innocent civilians again, then yes, this was all my doing," Boogeyman said, lips twisting into a frown. Legend only sighed in response. She could feel a number of emotions rolling under the man's skin, too quick and mixed for her to identify which one was taking dominance over him.

"Technically I should be trying to arrest you," Legend said, making Boogeyman tense up. She wasn't eager to get into a fight with Legend, but if she had to defend herself she would. "However, you did assist in taking down Lung, even if you were the one to start the engagement. And there's been enough fighting for tonight," he said, looking over to the bruised and battered members of the local Protectorate.

Boogeyman gave the man a searching gaze, looking for any sign of duplicity. But to her surprise, the man was being honest, or at the very least his emotions were being honest. Boogeyman gave the older man a slight nod, "Very well. Deimos, we're going."

"Boogeyman. Taylor," Legend said as a pair of Nightmares ghosted back over to them. She couldn't help but flinch a little at her name, but she turned around to look Legend in the eyes. "I understand wanting to do more, really I do. But this isn't the way to go about things. Please, if we can talk this out I'm sure we can figure something out. I understand if you never want to work with the Protectorate, but there's a better way than this," he said as he waved his hands out to the wrecked street.

There was a pleading edge to Legend's voice, a slight desperation that he openly showed. She could feel his fear of failing her, of allowing her to turn into a monster like so many others had before her. Whatever secrets that he was hiding behind his mask, he was being sincere about this. He honestly didn't want her to become a monster.

 _ **Too late.**_

"Oh, Legend," Boogeyman said with a sad smile as she gave Phobia a pat on the snout. "It's far too late for that."

* * *

 _"Do you have a shot?"_

The normally calm and collected voice of his boss had a rather ragged edge to it. It was something that he was going to want to keep an eye on, panicking bosses tended to get their employees killed.

"Yeah, I got her lined up," the codenamed Falcon said over his earpiece as he stared down the scope of his rifle. The teenage cape's head wasn't directly in his crosshairs, but a little below it to adjust for the distance between him. Even with the Tinker tech lasers, he was using there was a slight drag thanks to gravity.

A lesser man might balk at killing a kid, but Falcon had no such qualms. It was a harsh world out there, and one needed to grow past all that morality trash they tried to push onto you. He didn't know what the kid had done to piss the boss off so much, but he didn't care either way. All that mattered was that nice little bonus he would be getting at the end of the day once she was down and out.

 _"Do it."_

Falcon could feel the trigger shift as he squeezed down, ready to blow the head off the troublesome cape. A bolt of pure sunlight erupted from the barrel of his rifle, the blasting noise masked by the Tinker tech silencer and the music player that he had cranked up all the way to drown out the noise to the neighbors. He would have thanked the occupants for their donation of the player, but they were all too dead to care.

Of course, it was at that moment that the girl's position in space shifted as one of her minions rose up beneath her.

* * *

Boogeyman wasn't sure what had happened.

One moment she was mounting Phobia, the next there was a tearing, screeching noise and _pain._

She lurched forwards as something punched its way through her stomach. Balance lost, she slid off her steed's back and fell to the ground with a thud. She could distantly hear someone calling out her name, but all she could focus on was the smoking hole in her chest. Darkness dissipated of her form like smoke from a fire as she struggled to move.

A pair of hands wrapped around her and pulled her from the ground as another beam of pure light lanced towards her. She hissed as it struck her side, punching another hole straight through her form. She tried to make out what was going on, but everything was a blur. She could feel herself being loaded onto something before the agony finally became too much and she passed out from exhaustion.

* * *

 _"Is the target dead?"_

Falcon swallowed somewhat nervously at the dangerous tone his boss had. It was clear that he expected results, and in all honesty, he should have. He had the perfect shot, ruined because the little brat couldn't stay still for one second longer.

"No," he ground out even as he packed up his weapon. He doubted they would figure out where he had made the shot from, but it was best not to press his luck. He had already made one mistake too many tonight.

 _"I see,"_ his boss said in a tone that sent chills up his spine. That wasn't the voice of a very happy boss. That was the tone of someone who wanted to beat your head into the ground for doing something stupid voice. _"Meet me back at the base, we'll go over your failure."_

The line shut with a click, much to Falcon's relief, though he doubted the conversation he was going to have with the boss would be too pleasant. Still, the man was more rational than some of the villains he had worked for in the past, so at the very least he wouldn't have to worry about being skinned alive. He was probably going to get a pay cut, but that was preferable to being dead.

No, it wasn't the best situation but he would be okay. All he would have to do was keep his cool and have a nice chat with the boss, then everything would be alright.

* * *

 _ **Soon…**_

* * *

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